Lately I've been noticing a lot of weird hits coming in via my Google Alerts emails. I've dug into it and I think I've figured out what's going on: Google Alerts is spell checking the queries and matching the queries as it would do in a search. This in addition to matching the Alert queries exactly as previously. This new behavior kicked in about a week or 10 days ago.

For example: I keep an alert for [blogsci] because I have a website at blogsci.com. Up till recently, I used to get alerts only when the word "blogsci" was matched in a page. Now, I'm getting Alerts for pages that do not ever mention the word "blogsci" but the spell checked "blog sci". So I get matches for "...blog: sci-fi...". See what happened there?

Another example: I run a website with a domain name of XY.com where X is a word and Y is another word. My Alert is set to match it exactly as [XY]. This was going well until recently when I started getting alerts that match [X Y].

Another example: I have an alert for [cli.gs], my latest web app. I get a lot of spurious alerts for this because it matches [cli gs] which is a very popular combination apparently.

Anyone else seeing this weirdness? Any other interpretations? Thoughts in the comments please!

Hi MyBlogLog!

Part of what makes me so special is my ability to automatically add you to communities in which you have shown a repeated interest. I have just added you to the following communities:

1) Garbage Bin

http://go2/dev/null

Bonus -- The "Hot in My Garbage Bing" box on your My Home page will keep getting worse and worse with each community I delete my account from.

Rock on,

Me voting with my feet

Obviously, I'm pissed off about MyBlogLog, and anyone who has seen their emails similar to the above can guess why. The reason is quite simple: it's a mediocre service (at best) with a horrible interface and stupidly horrendous default behavior. As a webmaster, what I get out of it is rubbish analytics and an awkward way of building a community. As a user, I keep getting added (by default) to communities that I don't want to join necessarily. See, this assumption that by default I'd like to join any given community, wrapped in a self-gloating email ("Part of what makes MyBlogLog so special is our ability") is just plain wrong. I never turned on that feature and I never wanted to join that feature.

On the flip side, If I choose to manually join a community that means a lot more to the community's webmaster than me being added automatically to beef up their community head count. This works for the communities I run too: I don't want to just rack up avatar but I want a genuine community. Granted it's slower to build a community like that, but it will be by the members' choices not some automated "special" "ability". Please, get over yourselves.

So without futher wasting further time fixing stupid default behavior in return for little, I've closed my MyBlogLog account.

Sometimes I see help messages that just leave me speechless. This message from YouTube about my automatically-set language preferences goes above and beyond anything I've seen in a long time because it has two big "WTF moments":

The problems?

• The red circles: The suggestion that English (UK) is different from English (GB). Psst. They're the same thing. It's an exceptional reservation in the ISO standard.
• The black circle: The whole message is apparently not in English because the link at the bottom right corner gives me the option to view it in English. When I click it, I get the same message, but instead of suggesting English (UK), it suggests just plain old English. And oh, it gives me the option to change my language to the real English of English (US).

Hey, I have news for you YouTube: English, English (UK), English (GB) and English (US) are all freakin' English.

I was just searching with Yahoo! and I saw a survey request from "Yahoo! Surveys". It was a big purple box to the immediate right of the results list, and it was anchored to the bottom of the screen (so even if I scrolled down, it went down too). I clicked on it before I realized I should have taken a screenshot, but I did take a screenshot of the single question in the survey. The question opens in a new window:

Click for full size, and no, I'm not going to tell you what my answer was :p

If you're part of the SEO industry, unless you've been livining under a rock for the past couple of days, you will know that SEOmoz launched a new tool called Linkscape, to much fanfare. First things first, congrats and kudos are due to the SEOmoz team for building such a complex beast. It's not easy at the very least on the technical level.

But there is a problem: SEOmoz has not disclosed the user agent (UA) of its crawler. Here I will talk about why this is a bad thing, and also take a stab and go out on a limb and say: there is no SEOmoz crawler, at least not in the traditional sense. For the latter, I will offer a viable technical alternative, which may or not be correct, but the fact the alternative exists gives a sensible explanation as to why SEOmoz is not offering a straight answer to the UA question.

Why Disclosing the UA is Essential

Let's not mince words: we as an SEO community like a little mud fight once in a while. We debate and discuss and yes fight. But one thing we all know how to recognize is malicious activity and differentiate it from aggressive activity.

Example: a bot scraping our content for an MFA site is a tolerated nusance. We take steps to negate the effects of scrapers but at the end of the day we don't fight them hard. On the other hand, a bot probing for security holes is treated like a witch in 1209AD.

Which is why the Linkscape's lack of disclosure hurts: We as a community work hard at identifiying bots. SEOmoz is supposed to be a good citizen of the SEO world, and yet the lack of transparency goes against the spirit and the image of SEOmoz. On the one hand we have a company with a strong community doing good deeds (SEO trademark fight anyone?) and yet it behaves in a way we expect out of the shady side of the net we deal with every day.

Not just that: the data collected from us, about us, will be used against us. It's called competitive intelligence.

And not just that: SEOmoz is using the data to make money. The free version is pathetic and the Pro version needs a monthly subscription.

To me, this kind of behavior (stealth, harmful, and to make money) puts Linkscape squarely in the naughty corner. I certainly didn't expect this out of SEOmoz. Tough luck Rand and co: you have a great brand and I for one expect better!

But I won't ask for a UA because I think there isn't one.

How To Build Linkscape

It's actually quite easy on a conceptual level. However, just like cooking, having a recipe doesn't make you a great chef - there are lots of details that SEOmoz must have tackled successfully to build Linkscape. I am not trying to belittle their achievment, and all I can show you is one recipe. This recipe is completely my guess and could very well be wrong. I have not talked to anyone at SEOmoz.

So come on Pierre, what is it? The answer is the Yahoo! Search API. It's an API giving programmers complete access over the Yahoo! index without crawling to a single page. For example, the following URL:

fetches the first two hits from a Yahoo! [site:seomoz.org]. Interestingly, it tells you where the cache URLs are, and they reside on Yahoo! servers (unsurprisingly). So you fetch the cache from Yahoo!, do the analysis, save what you care about (links, titles, etc), and you're done.

You'll need to kick start this somehow with a seed set of sites. DMOZ and Wikipedia are usually good sources that are freely available. Wikipedia can even be downloaded so no one needs to know. Yahoo!'s very own Delicious, Digg, reddit, etc are also good starting points because they tell you what's hot right now. The seed is basically a huge set of URLs from which you extract the domain names and do [site:domain] queries. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Notice that you won't need to crawl a single page yourself. You let Yahoo! do the work for you. Neat, no?

So What Should SEOmoz Disclose?

Above I said two potentially conflicting things: SEOmoz should disclose the Linkscape user agent and then went on to show that it doesn't need to have a user agent. So what exactly am I asking from SEOmoz?

Easy: complete disclosure. If SEOmoz is using a traditional crawler, we must have its UA and the IP addresses. It's only a matter of time for us to find them. If not, SEOmoz needs to explain clearly why not.

Ladies and gentlemen: I'm writing a post next week and I need your help. I want stories from the trenches about how developers and SEOs talk (or not...) with each other.

Comment below. If you want to remain anonymous, please let me know.

Want an example? @Harith on twitter.

That's right folks, the short URL market is broken and I'm fixing it. The new service is called Cligs (like Clicks but with a G). It's a short URL service on steroids. The key feature is that it tracks the clicks of the short URLs.

What kind of analytics do you get? At launch right now:

• Cligs gives you tons of traffic data and analytics about the traffic your short URLs get. This includes:
  • Number of hits
  • Referral stats
  • Mentions on twitter, blogs, and the web
  • Mentions of the destination URL on twitter, blogs, the web, and delicious
  And lots more! And if you want a more data, just let me know!
• Cligs forwards with a 301 Permanent Redirect so your destination URL gets full SEO benefits of the link. If you are an affiliate marketer, this means you can hide your backlinks, get traffic, get statistics, and get the SEO benefits.
• With Cligs, you can create an unlimited number of short URLs for the same destination URL. This is great because you can promote the same destination at different sites like twitter or facebook by using different cligs and watch how each source sends you traffic.

That's just the start. There are a ton of new features that are going to be added in the coming few days and weeks, including some SEO-useful analytics.

And, of course, there is a bookmarklet:

Shorten Link @ Cli.gs

So what are you waiting for? Stop using plain-vanilla short URL services and start using Cligs.

Comments and feedback most welcome.

For the past few months, I've been tracking a crawler from Yahoo! that does not identify itself on my science blog. The bot's details are:

Notice a few interesting details: No user-agent string, the fact it provides an HTTP_REFERER header that's the same page being requested, it comes from *.yahoo.com not the usual yahoo.net for Slurp, and the fact it says "image" and "srch" in the host.

The tracking is very low-level, a few hits a day with lots of one-hit-a-day visits.

What's really interesting is how laser-targeted it is: it's only requested the same two pages many times since May. The pages are the specific blog post linked to above plus the archive page that contains that post, so it's likely something about that post that's of interest to the bot. And yes, the post contains an image, and the image is the only one in the main content of the archive.

I'll dig deeper when I have a chance. Please let me know in the comments below if you're seeing something similar.

Finally I've had a chance to test Google's latest installment in the long-running series of half-baked betas, Google Chrome. Honestly, I will not rant in this post about how Google is taking over the web or whatnot, but I will ask a series of questions that I would like answered honestly and without any marketing gimmicks that are supposed to live up to Google's do-no-evil-we're-cute hype.

• Let's start with the license. A lot of people have noticed that the Google Chrome fine-print contains some really dodgy items (examples: CNet and read write web). The offending bit is this:

  11. Content license from you

  11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

  11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

  11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

  11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

  Ominous, no? This prompted Google's Matt Cutts to "dispel" this conspiracy theory. He went right to the heart of Googleborg and got a straight answer:

  In order to keep things simple for our users, we try to use the same set of legal terms (our Universal Terms of Service) for many of our products. Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product. We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.

  Gee, Google, I didn't know we can pick and choose terms and conditions to apply to some products and not to others. That's just not the point of a license: either it applies as a whole or it doesn't. It says so in the terms and conditions themselves:

  20.2 The Terms constitute the whole legal agreement between you and Google and govern your use of the Services (but exclude any services that Google may provide to you under a separate written agreement) and completely replace any prior agreements between you and Google in relation to the Services.

  So please, stop playing around and provide the true license.

• While we're on the license: Chrome is Open Source, yet the license isn't. Why not use an OSI-approved license? Yes, even for the binary. Without this, you can't claim that Chrome is really open source. Unless...

• Suppose Chrome isn't open source. Suppose you can get the code but the binary comes (or will come) with lots of other gadgetry that Google approves of. Let's, oh, take an example of no way to block adverts. But it's open source! Well yes, it's open source if you care to download the code and know what to do with it. To the rest of us, the average Google user really, having access to the source code is irrlevant. So Google can bundle whatever it wants and no one will know the difference.

• Speaking of licenses and adverts: what is section 17 for?

• The interface: I don't like it personally but it's OK. It's like it doesn't want you to do anything - don't you dare find the Under The Hood options. Also, I find using the window's top frame as the tab bar to be very confusing and wrong on so many levels (the tabs are part of the window not *the* window!). The question here is: why? What logical argument places an interface element in the window border?

• Really, when does Chrome contact Google? Matt Cutts posted about this and also Twittered to a quick privacy review that gave Chrome a thumbs up. But let's quote Matt:

  If you are typing a search or url in the address bar, Google Chrome will talk to the current search service to try to offer useful query/url suggestions.

  Search suggestions are fine - great actually - because they help me search. Querying Google (the default search service) about URLs is off limits. Let's not mince words here: some URLs *are* private. What kinds? Flickr protected albums for one. To share a private album in Flickr, it creates a unique URL that you share with your friends. No one else knows it so it's a decent enough protection for this scenario. Why does Google want to know? And does Google log it? Will the data be magically incorporated into Google Website Trends or Analytics?

So until Google figures out its license, and until Google gives us straight answers, Chrome is uninstalled from my machine.

What do you think? Comments below please.

OK, Google, I've had it with your excessive stupidities. I'm talking about the monstrosity that's your AdSense login system.

I posted about this over on Cre8 back in February. The summary is this:

• I have an AdSense login, let's call it abc@xyz.com.

• When I logged in back in February, it said migrate your account. So I did, but, silly me, I didn't want to change my login address so I entered abc@xyz.com as my address. It worked... until the next time I logged in.

• Since then, so for the past 6 months, AdSense kept asking me to migrate my login, which I already did! Not only that, as the image below shows (from the Cre8 thread above), it has a message in the yellow box: The message says: "Are you one of the following people?" and the list below the answer is abc@xyz.com, which is the email address I just used to login.

• The answer to this question is yes, I am abc@xyz.com, and so I follow its request to "Return to AdSense" and login using abc@xyz.com. When I do that, I enter an endless loop: I login and I get shown this error.

• But there is - or was until earlier today - hope! See, I could skip this stupid wizard and continue to see today's crappy earnings. I've been skipping the wizard for the past 6 months. And today, they are forcing me to migrate my account.

• And here is the kicker: I cannot tell this stupid system that I want abc@xyz.com to be my new Google Accounts login for AdSense. Why should I have to create another account? Listen, Google, if you want to inflate your accounts count, I'd be very happy to create a few more for you. I even won't tell your stockholders if you don't.

• So I thought I'd ask for help. The link in the top right ends up here and I click through to Contacting AdSense, then to