July 30th, 2007 by john andrews
In the world of monetary systems, circulation is essential for growing healthy economies. Wealth that is earned can be put back into circulation via banking and investment industries. The dollar is always at work, helping someone somewhere earn, and one’s wealth is measured in ownership and control of enterprises that participate in the economy.
The opposite of circulation would be collecting your paper money under your mattress. Yes, you’re wealthy, but if the economy tanks while you’re holding that paper wealth, you just may lose the value to multi-digit inflation as has happened numerous times in countries with sick economies. I was in Brasil just after the government lopped a few zeros off the value of their paper currency in response to huge inflation. It was not pretty. That 1,000 bill in your hand was suddenly worth 10. Had it been in circulation, your holdings would have probably survived much better than that 1,000 bill.
Are domain names the same? Does circulation help maintain a healthy web, and thus help maintain a successful web economy?
As I advise businesses on web issues I often get involved in choosing and buying domain names. Lately, most domain names are already reserved. But an alarming number of those reserved domain names are unused. Can this be healthy for the web?
I think a domain name should be in use, or available to be used. As long as meaningful domains function on the web, people will use the web. Imagine a web where most domain names did not resolve. Time after time the consumer tries a domain name, and nothing seems to resolve. Search engines take over. Now that search engines are monetizing search with advertisements, paid placements and promotions, meaningful domain names are more desirable. They allow us to reach the consumer in a sea of promotional ads and attention-stealing search engine trickery. They have more meaning.
But if a large number of domains are reserved and not used, what happens to the domain name system? It is not working for the consumers as it was designed. It becomes less important to the masses, despite the individually held domain names being important to their “owners” (the ones hiding them under their mattresses). Just as governments can lop zeros from the end of currencies they control, they can change the way the domain name system works. Will that be good?
I think we should try and keep domain names in circulation, working on the web. If you’re not using it, let someone else use it. If there is a monetary value, let the market trade on that value. Keep the domain names in circulation, to help keep the web healthy for everyone.
Topical Tags:
Posted in Competitive Webmastering | 2 Comments
July 30th, 2007 by john andrews
The Mozilla people have put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a bugler to play taps for ThunderBird. That’s my take on this post by the Mozilla Foundation’s on the future of Thunderbird.
I have to admit, the Mozilla foundation has irked me for a few years now. Ever since they went blatantly commercial, I have been skeptical of their motives. It wasn’t so much that they “try to earn a living for themselves and their programmers” (so please, spare me that tired retort) but the way they went about it. I consider it exploitation - open source, free software, community good will …. and behind closed doors, deals with Google to sell typo redirection and toolbar installs and such. And that whole thing about filing tax extension requests and then filing late as a commercial entity because, oh look, even though we were non-profit and living off the good will of the open source supporting community, we were actually earning a huge profit so we have to re-write the past 8 months or so of history…mmmkay?
I knew several quality people who contributed their own time, money, and energies to supporting Mozilla during those months. They contributed donations. They bought T-shirts and gave them away, as a means of giving something back to the people who gave them the free browser, the free email client, etc. They chose Linux over Windows and worked hard to convince others of the virtues of supporting projects like Mozilla. And as they did that, Mozilla was earning millions from monetizing that good will. And then Mozilla basically said “oh, while we were saying we were non-profit, we weren’t really, ok? But we’ve back adjusted our paperwork to make it all ok, okay?” Nice.
So now I read how that money-seeking, commercial (but-not-really, okay?) “non-profit” foundation dislikes the taste of Thunderbird. I can’t help but read between the lines of the post:
Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation.
In other words, “we’re getting pretty darn tied of supporting this cost center”.
The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn’t support Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus – delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services – is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.
Translation: Thunderbird is good as a mail program, but we make so much delicious money from Google which we can’t spend on development for Thunderbird because it directly competes with GMail. Oh, and we’re likin’ the bling bling, so there’s no way we’re going back. And those Thunderbird developers…we’ve segmented them out from the rest of our money-making ventures so they really don’t fit in any more, ahem.. great people that they are.
We have concluded that we should find a new organizational approach for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.
Now seriously, doesn’t that sound exactly like corporate-speak for “you’re fired”?
Mozilla is exploring the options for an organization specifically focused on serving Thunderbird users. A separate organization focused on Thunderbird will both be able to move independently and will need to do so to deepen community and user involvement. We’re not yet sure what this organization will look like. We’ve thought about a few different options. I’ve described them below. If you’ve got a different idea please let us know.
How can I not see the set up in that statement? “We like you, we really do, but it’s best you move away from us. Far away. Over there. We promise to do all we can to help you survive.. really… whenever we can. It’ll be better for you… it will…trust me…”
Okay so I get it… you’re dumping Thunderbird because it’s nothing more than a great, free, open source alternative to the available commercial, privacy-invading alternatives like GMail that line your pockets and make you happy happy happy. I can understand that - it’s called greed and it’s very very common. But puhleeeeze stop wrapping this crap in warm fuzzy blankets. It’s making me gag.
Perhaps the bestest part of all, is Mitchell’s post which repeats this stuff but adds the swift kick in the pants to the Thunderbird devotees: He tacks on a job ad for developers looking to create a new email client:
We would also like to find contributors committed to creating and implementing a new vision of mail. We would like to have a roadmap that brings wild innovation, increasing richness and fundamental improvements to mail. And equally importantly, we would like to find people with relevant expertise who would join with Mozilla to make something happen.
Man that has got to suck for the Thunderbird people. Not only has Mozilla-the-Corporation isolated you and labeled you as unworkable in the “New Millenia”, but they’ve gone and re-branded you as “old vision“, “non-innovative“, “low-richness“. Ouch. Maybe it’s just me, but if Mozilla-the-Corporation is so successful, and obviously Thunderbird is amazingly robust, WTF is wrong with putting some of that CorporateAbility to work moving the Thunderbird team into the “new vision”? Last I looked, if a vision was promising enough to warrant investment, then you invested in it. How could it be possible that a company with a great email client considers it more effective to dump the entire project and start over? Smells like bad management to me. Maybe the same bad management that exploited the non-commercial good will? Maybe the same bad management that isolated the Thunderbird team to the point of unworkability? I’m thinking the Google money is coming way too easy for these guys,that’s what I’m thinking.
So please stop. It’s all silly. You’re dumping Thunderbird because it’s not making money, it competes with GeeMail, and the developers own it. You’re culture clashing with those developers, the same way AOL culture-clashed with the Mozilla developers back in the day. You don’t care about the free mail client, you care about the money-making potential of injecting ads into email or whatever other commercial nonsense you can think up and label as “innovative richness”. You aren’t up to the task of managing a real company, and with so little accountability you take the easy route. Let’s face it, Mozilla, you have become BabyAOL.
We have other browsers: By the way, if you haven’t tried the newest Opera it’s amazing, and if you want ad-free Firefox without most of the exploitation, check out the SeaMonkey project.
Topical Tags: public relations
Posted in Competitive Webmastering, Public Relations | 1 Comment
July 29th, 2007 by john andrews
It seems the Internet is changing things for the better. In my last post about the Canon EOS-1D MkIII autofocus, I commented how camera manufacturers get away with shipping inferior computerized cameras because we users cannot afford to properly test the single units we purchase. If you get a soft focuser or a stutterer you really can’t make a case with Canon or the dealer, because there are simply too many variables and it is too difficult to prove.
Well, that back focusing issue I highlighted has become a big issue, and the fine work done by the folks at ProPhotoHome is making big waves. NatureScapes now has a lengthy thread describing the issues nature photographers have had with the new MkIII, especially those trying to shoot flying birds. The Rob Galbraith people seem pissed, and were quick to test the new firmware release to see if it fixed the problem: it didn’t.
If the Internet enables grass roots action, we see it happening here. Some of the commentary from the very influential digital photogaphy websites, regarding this new $5,000 digital camera from Canon:
From Rob Galbraith.com:
…on sunny, warm days, the EOS-1D Mark III’s ability to grab focus initially, hold focus on static subjects and track moving subjects is both unusably poor and no match for the camera’s predecessor, the EOS-1D Mark II N…We’ve now shot and analysed about 3400 track, soccer and test frames taken over two days… and the results are effectively the same as before: lots of out-of-focus frames that should be crisply focused. And, as before, simply putting the EOS-1D Mark II N onto the same lens and shooting the same stuff produces a high percentage of in-focus photos.
Ouch. If we looked at the PPC payouts, for the DP sites, as a measure of how close they are to the purchase decision, we would see they are VERY INFLUENTIAL for high-end digital camera buying. That has got to hurt. Canon must be paying attention, but can they fix the problem?
Topical Tags: Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment
July 27th, 2007 by john andrews
We all know Google hates SEO. They used to express it openly, before they were a BigPublicCompany. Then they branded it, with the “black hat” references. Now they are quiet about openly opposing SEO, although with each new “advance” of the Google “algorithm” they try and kill off what is commonly understood to be Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They do it by trying to make it irrelevant, or at least trying to make it appear that way. They do it by taking away the signals that suggest a need for SEO, one at a time.
Now they have added a great SEO tool “Unavailable after” while at the same time increasingly removing one of the best signals of SEO problems, the supplemental label. I don’t often agree with Michael Martinez, but this time I love what he says over at SearchEngineLand (bold added):
But I am increasingly concerned about the message coming from Google regarding Supplemental Results pages. Simply removing “Supplemental Result” from the SERP listings won’t change the fact that Google only partially parses and indexes the Supplemental Results pages (a fact Matt Cutts confirmed at SMX Advanced 2007 in Seattle). If Google does not begin fully parsing and indexing the Supplemental Results pages then they need to keep the designation visible so that users and Webmasters alike know there is something different in the data they are seeing. Otherwise Google will be engaging in a deceptive trade practice by deliberately and intentionally misleading people regarding the way they process and present Web data information.
Just removing the label hurts SEO practitioners and end users interested in web site performance. It does nothing to improve the algorithm, and actually hurts the promised mission of making the world’s information accessible. I think Michael’s being a bit wishful with that corruption allusion, though.
They’ve added “did you mean” which reduces reliance on some aspects of SEO. They’ve integrated some aspects of Universal Search, which effects some of SEO negatively. They say that underscores will now parse just like hyphens, which takes away an SEO task (or seems to). Underscores are always ripe for SEO services, as coders love them.
But what do all this adjustments really do to SEO? They help SEO. You see, SEO is about competition, not marketing. Google is a marketing company. There is only 1 #1 spot for every search, and Google can never change that until it ceases to be a search destination and traffic referral source. Sure, it can become a portal like Yahoo! and eliminate the need to appear #1 (I lost track of the location of the #1 organic search resulton Yahoo! a while ago… let me know if you find it). But as long as Google wants to be TheSearchEngine, it will have organic results. As long as it has organic results that matter, SEO will survive. As long as Google makes it harder to SEO, SEO will thrive. Just ask Ask… the only way to kill off the SEO incentive is to remove organic results from the first page - LOL.
So keep trying, Google, because it feels good. Less pressure on us SEOs for short term results because you are making it obvious that it takes time to beat Google at it’s own game, and you are making it obvious that in order to beat Wikipedia, the regular webmaster needs more than just a $29/month SEO services package from Network Solutions’ overseas affiliates. What’s that you say? Is there anything else you can do to help us SEO blokes? Sure! How about raising those PPC minimum bids again? I don’t care if you do it by “adjusting” the “quality” requirements or by outright demand, just do it, ok? It’s GREAT for business!
Topical Tags: SEO
Posted in SEO, Competitive Webmastering | 6 Comments
July 27th, 2007 by john andrews
Tsk tsk tsk… there is but one thing more annoying than a web programmer community site that doesn’t properly handle sessions. And that is a web programmer community site that posts a review of an SEO for PHP book, offers an opportunity to comment, but then then prevents me from posting my comment (presumably because of the sessions issue, but who cares why?).
Anyway that community site is Zend Developer Zone, and the less-than-stellar review I can’t comment on is for a SEO for PHP book over here.
If you search Zend Framework SEO you get three misleading results in the top three spots. You then get non-relevant stuff. We could really use some decent content ranking in that SERP for Zend Framework SEO. The top result is the most worriesome: a positive review for a book on SEO for PHP, that is misinformed and clearly biased. I would like to suggest that all SEO Consultants read that review, because it clearly demonstrates the bias held by PHP coders regarding SEO. Understand the perspective of that PHP coder writing the review, and you understand what I deal with when I work with tech teams on client projects.
Here is the response I wanted to post to the comments on that Zend Developer page:
I’m going to use this review as an example of how programmers view SEO. It demonstrates a bias quite well.
First let me say that if you are a PHP pro, comfortable with the ZF repository, you are far different from the majority of technologists responsible for SEO implementations.
Second, SEO is a dynamic discipline. Even the best book on SEO and PHP has to spend the bulk of it’s 300+ pages on enabling infrastructure. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not all you need to SEO your sites. Whenever the book recommends implementation tactics, that advice must be suspect because SEO factors change continuously.
Third, if you really know PHP, you recognize that 10 good PHP programmers will implement a web site on ZF 10 different ways. All on ZF, but all different. Same for SEO. Ten SEO-savvy people will SEO a web site 10 different ways. What’s different about SEO, however, is it is accountable. The implementation that was “best” is the one that out ranks the others.
Which brings me to the final point: SEO tactics by themeselves are like ZF by itself: basically useless. ZF is an enabling framework for web app development. SEO is a framework for ranking on targeted search phrases. Would you implement ZF for a project without a good PHP coder? Why do you think you can implement SEO without a good SEO?
I’m not saying you can’t.. I’m not much of a PHP coder but I deploy PHP web sites all by myself and they do their job. But I know very well the value of a good PHP coder, even when I decide against hiring one for a project.
Now I would expect this to be WAY over the head of most SEOs, because very few SEOs are so advanced in their PHP work to be working with the latest release of the Zend Framework. That’s not an elitist statement - I am far from a good PHP coder. But I do work with ZF and it is non-trivial stuff. You really need to be waste high in PHP development world to understand how ZF is properly deployed SEO-wise; much more than user-level involvement. What SEO has time besides the tech team (PHP coders) or the PHP-skilled self-practioner? And that is the problem.. those PHP guys will read that review and get misdirected. I have greatest respect for those who SEO for themselves, and especially those competitive webmasters with mad PHP skillz. And I’m all for selling books if you’re friends are writing them. But I dislike reading bad SEO advice, no matter the context.
These are the current top four results in Google for Zend Framework SEO:
Zend Developer Zone | Search Engine Friendly Websites with the …
The Zend Framework allows for websites that are search engine friendly, although some thought needs to be taken when building your application. …
devzone.zend.com/article/949-Search-Engine-Friendly-Websites-with-the-Zend-Framework - 35k - Cached - Similar pages
Zend Developer Zone
Zend Framework and the New Hybrid Designer … (the lovely and talented Kathy) attended a very expensive conference on SEO put on by 4 SEO Professionals. …
devzone.zend.com/ - 30k - Jul 24, 2007 - Cached - Similar pages
SEO friendly URL’s on Zend Framework - Zend Framework Forum
Hello, I am very concern about SEO things for some websites and i am wondering what can do ZF for us. This is in fact the main reason for which i didn’
www.zfforums.com/…/search-engine-optimization-friendly-urls-zend-framework-44.html - 74k - Cached - Similar pages
AJAX Tooling For Zend Framework Will Be a Full Development …
Also on the future roadmap is AJAX tooling for the Zend framework. … By SEO/SEM News Desk. FTC Probing Microsoft & Yahoo Ad Deals As Well As Google’s …
search.sys-con.com/read/397497.htm - 76k - Cached - Similar pages
What would be really cool to see? Stuff that matter when considering SEO on Zend Framework? How about:
Having your Cake and Eating it 2.0 : Using a front controller with strict URLs. Rerouter Black Magic for Zend Framework.
Cross-platform Trailing Slash redirection: We don’t need to stinkin’ Apache
Getting More out of URLs: 100 Ways to encode infrastructure bits into URLs to drive SEOs Crazy: (starts with CamelCase parsing, moves on to underscores, hacks its way to hyphens and finally configurabe separators! Plenty of language-specific issues included!
Topical Tags: php SEO zend framework
Posted in SEO, Competitive Webmastering | 10 Comments
July 26th, 2007 by john andrews
After publishing this ugliness, Time Magazine had better be completely arms-length from any online dating site that competes with eHarmony. Talk about nasty commentary, that article is as biased as they come. I have to wonder just how bad an online romantic experience the Time “reporter” had with eHarmony to cause that rant. Or maybe she (he?) never got past the screening… it’s probably worse to get rejected by the bot than a human, eh?
Topical Tags: public relations
Posted in Competitive Webmastering, Public Relations | 2 Comments
July 25th, 2007 by john andrews
The SEO Pricing report is in and it looks like this (as of July 25 1am PST):
|
Service
|
Low End
|
Mid Range
|
High End
|
| Site Review + Consulting |
$500 |
$2,500 |
$10,000 |
| Hands-On Editing of Pages/Code |
$2,000 |
$10,000 |
$50,000 |
| Manual Link Building Campaign |
$500 |
$5,000 |
$20,000 |
| 1-Day SEO Training Seminar |
$750 |
$4,000 |
$12,000 |
| Keyword Research Package |
$100 |
$500 |
$2,000 |
| Viral Content Development + Mktg |
$1,000 |
$7,500 |
$20,000 |
| Web Design, Development + Mktg |
$5,000 |
$25,000 |
$100K+ |
| Monthly Retainer for Ongoing SEO |
$2,500 |
$7,500 |
$20,000+ |
Those are the numbers promoted by SEOMoz, based on the experiences of the SEOMoz firm. You have to understand that the report is likely intended to promote good will in the SEO industry (get back links), support potential clients looking to better understand SEO as an industry (feel good factor), while still protecting SEOMoz from going out too far on a limb. Such a report also has to position SEOMoz properly, since they publish such high rates over there ($1000/hr for consulting.. does that make them high-end?). I don’t know anyone who has actually paid those rates, although I did witness one SEO firm pitch a client at $60k/month on contract. As with all business, I am sure the costs are backed by a business service proposal, so how can you critique based on cost? I’d certainly pay $60k/month to rank where I could boost my profits by $70k/month while managing risk within my established business model. Wouldn’t you?
Anyway notice the broad range of prices… a training seminar from $750 to $12,000 per day. That broadness pretty much guarantees no-one will be offended, but the reort still does a decent job of suggesting what can be expected when pricing SEO services. The only problem is… where is the SEO?
I do SEO training on a fee basis. I charge for my time, and my rates are reasonable. However, my requirements are also reasonable. If I travel, I am spending time on your project. Do you like to pay my hourly rate as I fly or wait in line for security? Of course not. But someone has to reimburse that time, right? So is there work to be done in flight? There certainly could be. So in advance, we can work out how much travel time is available for work, what work can be done that is of value to the client, and agree on pricing and deliverables. I don’t waste my time or your time while traveling, and I don’t have to inflate my seminar fees to cover the uncertainties associated with travel. See how business works? Now what is that daily seminar going to cost… $750? $12,000? How could any one know? Travel was one example.. how many people teach? What are their qualifications? Or perhap smost important of all, how many students will there be?
As SEO grows up it realizes it is not SEO but consulting. At the very least it is contracting, with a “general contractor” almost always needed, and of course taking a management fee. A “keyword research package” in the table above could be a scan of WordTracker and Keyword Discovery databases, or an investigation into the semantics of a competitive SERP. One costs $99 when outsourced, the other can’t be outsourced. Which are you getting for your $100 to $2000 price?
SEO as an industry is growing up. It’s really consulting, with an agency model available for those who want it. What happens to a pricing report in that case? Let me see, consultants charge between $10 and $4000 per hour, right?
Topical Tags: SEO
Posted in SEO, Competitive Webmastering | 6 Comments
July 24th, 2007 by john andrews
Typepad.com services have been offline for almost an hour. Tick tock… subscribers are losing money every minute. This was reportedly received by a Typepad subscriber ten minutes ago:
Dear TypePad member,
The TypePad service is currently unavailable due to power issues at our co-location facility. This means that the TypePad application and your TypePad blog are not reachable at this time. This begin at approximately 1:50 pm Pacific Daylight Time today, Tuesday July 24 2007.
We are working closely with our hosting partner to bring TypePad back online as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this is causing, and we appreciate your patience. We will send another email update with more information as soon as possible.
Thank you,
The TypePad team
Topical Tags:
Posted in Competitive Webmastering | 3 Comments
July 23rd, 2007 by john andrews
When will Google start charging a fee for passing a referrer string? Or, more in line with Google’s way, stop passing referrer except for certified Googlers in the Webmaster Central (console) registration system?
Every time I get a Google search referral, I am told (by Google, via the “referer” string) what search query resulted in that referral. I use that real-time data to deliver targeted ads to my visitors. Using this blog as an example, if a consumer searched “shower gel” and Google sent them to my ranking shower gel page, that page would know the user had searched “shower gel” and could therefore serve up contextual ads for shower products or more likely, health products that complement the reigning King of Shower Gel Land, Axe Shower Gel.
When I do that, I do not use AdSense. I do it myself, and keep all the profit of direct advertising. I am also able to better monetize my network, drawing more investment from my direct advertising clients, because of the obvious value ad I show with the Google-referrer-based in-network contextual advertising. Google, by passing that referrer string, is helpin gme serve up contextual ads. Google gets no fee, no slice o’ da pie. Nada.
We know how much Google hates organic search engine optimization because it is free and it competes directly with AdWords. If Google hates SEO, how must it feel about organic optimizaton which also monetizes contextually using Google’s assistance? That must suck for Google, no?
It would be so easy for Google to stop passing ‘referer’. When Google was a good Internet company, it gained a ton of good will from those referrer strings. Does it need that now? Hmmm.. Tough call. Google needs to show everyone how 65% of their web traffic comes from Google. That’s very important.
So what’s a competitive webmaster to do? Push the limits of optimizing the monetization of that Google traffic, using as much available data as possible. Organic SEO and contextual monetization, all the way until we don’t need AdSense anymore. Syndicated networks of contextual ads, based on Google referer strings… how much does that push buttons over at the ‘plex?
Webmaster Console…lead generation for Google’s future.
Topical Tags: SEO
Posted in SEO, Competitive Webmastering | No Comments
July 23rd, 2007 by john andrews
Google would love to assign a credit bureau account to every web site on the web. A social security number. It seems Google is now accessing the financial transaction records of web hosting companies.
You’ve properly obfusctated your public WHOIS data. You’ve carefully managed your public contact information, including your Google account(s) like your AdSense account, your sitemaps account, and your gmail account. You keep your Google-known web sites up on a pedestal, to have them appear as worthy as possible of the GoogleTrust. And those other sites? You know, the test sites, and spammy sites you bought but haven’t yet had time to cleanup, and those 6 year old link farms that were ok back then but have since become “black hat”? How could you possibly turn off that wonderful perseverant PR? Those awesome legacy affiliate codes that outrank even their parent affiliate sites? So, you’ve kept them under the radar.
Unique IPs on separate blocks. Different data centers. But how did you pay for the hosting? Did you use your credit card, assuming the financial transaction data was strictly between you and the hosting company, none of Google’s business?
Well Google checkout changes all that. Google checkout, used for web hosting, hands over all that financial transaction data to Google. And hosting companies like Dreamhost are requiring customers to use Google checkout. Others offer it as an option, but Dreamhost offers only Check or Money Order or Google Checkout under a set of conditions said to be for “fraud prevention” but apparently for profit reasons - Google checkout is free through the end of the year.
I hear you thinking a few things:
1. Any idiot who uses Google checkout for hosting deserves the associated privacy invasion.
2. Any hosting company that requires webmasters to use Google checkout is stupid, and should lose the business anyway.
3. Dreamhost says it only requires Google checkout under certain, undisclosed conditions related to fraud prevention.
4. Who cares? No one should ever use Dreamhost anyway.
Allow me to address these in turn:
1. Any idiot who uses Google checkout for hosting deserves the associated privacy invasion: Yes, I agree. But what if you have been with Dreamhost, and renewal comes up, and you find you can only renew with Google Checkout? Dreamhost will lock the account until you pay, so you lose access to your files, stats, etc. I am quite sure many webmasters fall into this trap, and are faced with “Tell Google who’s paying for this web site, or lose everything”
2. Any hosting company that requires webmasters to use Google checkout is stupid, and should lose the business anyway. I totally agree, which is why I am amazed at this. They need or want the extra 3% so bad they risk such a webmaster-unfriendly reputation?
3. Dreamhost says it only requires Google checkout under certain, undisclosed conditions related to fraud prevention. Yes, I have seen those tech support comments. Onces that say it only happens for certain credit card codes, country codes, etc. Well, if an address in Washington State trips their fraud protection system (before any credit card has been entered) then that’s a bogus excuse. There are many other reports of a similar nature out there. We’re all being thrown to the “Google Checkout only” condition for some other reason.
4. Who cares? No one should ever use Dreamhost anyway. Actually, Dreamhost is good for small-time junk and kids stuff. Like this case that triggered my post - my pre-teen son’s development work. Dreamhost is not very reliable, but cheap and fast, and they implement many features better than other cheap web hosts. And client cases like, 25 domains wrestled away from an extortionist former employee, which need to be parked asap under SEO consultant control? Can’t beat a $8/month Dreamhost account for that.
The point isn’t Dreamhost… the point is so many web masters identifying themselves by credit account to Google. That’s trouble with a capital T as Google tastes the blood of web hosting financial data. What would it take to incentivise web hosts to “prefer” Google checkout? Not much, apparently.
Topical Tags:
Posted in Competitive Webmastering | 1 Comment
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