Michael Roebuck's Blog

All Web Promotion ranks in the top 50 SEO Firms and Resources as reported in the August, 2008 issue of Website Magazine. According to the list, we rank 32. Way to go team!

Labels: ranking, seo, top50

Apparently Conrad Hilton's Board of Directors saw it coming so they started broadening there brands. I say Board of Directors because his descendants are too busy being in the news helping degrade his name.

I'm fed up with Hilton Hotels. Usually when you hear the name "Hilton Hotel" you think quality. Expensive, but quality. Apparently, not any more! (Quality anyway. They are still expensive.)

As you know, I was in San Jose attending the Search Engine Strategies conference and past years have stayed at the Hampton Inn on Old Tully Road. The Hampton Inn was clean, large rooms, well lit, large bathrooms, Free Internet, Free breakfast, Extremely friendly staff (The manager himself drove us to the train station one day and picked us up later that night.)

This year, I figured with the savings in taxi fare and my Hilton Honors free breakfast upgrade, I'd stay at the Hilton next door to the convention center. (Denise.... Never let me do that again!!!! You continue making the reservations!) Well, I did save on taxi fare but apparently they don't do breakfast here in San Jose. Chicago does, but not San Jose. Huh?? I need to be a gold or platinum or some other member but my Hilton Honors wasn't good enough here for access. There goes my savings! At over $15 for breakfast my days are not starting off very good.

The rooms at the Hilton are not the best. I guess most everything. The beds are actually comfortable which is a major factor. I'm not only picking on San Jose here either. The rooms at the Chicago Hilton aren't any better, but also has comfortable beds. Here are a few pictures of the lap of luxury:



No vents in the bathroom. Well, they have a vent, but no fan.


You can't see it very well, but the water is spraying from all areas of the shower. Make sure the shower curtain is closed before turning on the shower! Very old shower heads.


Can you see the puddle of water? Maybe you don't need to worry about the shower curtain. It doesn't do well anyway! I make a point to move the shower curtain to prevent water from leaking everywhere. Sometimes it's just not good enough. That probably explains the nasty tiled floor.


Here is my room. It's hard to see with this picture but the room is very dark. They use these tiny compact fluorescent light bulbs that don't give off much light. I'm typing this in a dark corner of the desk area. And I can't leave the desk because there isn't any wireless Internet access. Since I'm complaining about dark hotel rooms, the only hotel I remember being darker than this room is the Luxor in Las Vegas. Those rooms were very dark.

Anyway, I'm sorry Hampton Inn for not staying with you this trip. However, you were priced a bit high which caused us to shop around. Next year, I may stay away from the Hilton Brand altogether. I wonder if there is a Holiday Inn Express around here?

Labels: express, hampton, hilton, holiday, hotel, inn, jose, san, ses

Congratulations to Yahoo for receiving the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Award for the Search Engine with Most Relevant Search Results.

I knew that Merchant Solutions was the best hosting platform, now we know you have the most relevant search results as well.

Congratulations!!

More info on the: Search Engine Strategies Awards - 2008

Labels: awards, search, ses, yahoo

I was eating lunch at the Hotel here in San Jose and decided to check email from my phone. I received a blog post that really caught my eye. Scott Smigler of Exclusive Concepts had written a great article on why Yahoo Store was the best e-commerce platform.

Scott's company is like mine and they are also a Yahoo Partner. Anyway, I highly recommend you go and read his article titled: Yahoo Store | The Best E commerce Platform for SEO.

I don't want to copy any of his text because it's a new post and I want to be sure Google picks his article up first. But in my opinion, it's a good read all but one major flaw.

He specifically states Yahoo Merchant Solutions is a great platform if you plan on or are doing a minimum of $500,000 annual sales. I respectfully disagree. Yahoo Merchant Solutions is an excellent platform for EVERYONE, with no suggestion of minimum annual sales. Where else can you have an easy to design website that includes a secure shopping cart for $39 month? He does mention it's scalable so as your business grows you can access more features but for the new person starting out, it's an excellent vehicle. We too looked at other platforms and seriously considered designing eBay ProStores at one time but no-one, and I mean No-One comes close to what Yahoo Merchant Solutions offers. As Scott mentions, That probably explains why 1 in 8 e-commerce sites are hosted by Yahoo!

So, great story Scott! I enjoyed reading it. And maybe you placed a minimum to ward off the low end design clients. The ones who want a site like Amazon for $300. That's OK. We have a $299 package and can work with them! (No Amazon though. Not even close for $299)

If you are on the fence about if you should use Yahoo Merchant Solutions, Go read Scott's article!

Labels: merchant, solutions, yahoo

In reference to my post yesterday titled, "Hackersafe - McAfee Secure vs. ControlScan" as well as a post by Cresta Pillsbury titled, "What is McAfee thinking?????", and to quote Bob Dylan; "The Times They Are a-Changin'".

Karl Ribas came into my office today asking what yesterday's post was supposed to mean. "It doesn't make sense," he said. After pulling up a website to show him, I see McAfee Secure changed there secure page and removed the link to the shopping sites. I really wish I has taken a screen shot, but I didn't.

It looks like McAfee has removed the big link to the shopping sites but replaced it with a smaller text link under the content. The second large link now reads, "Stay Safe From Online Threats" and links you to there Site Advisor product. Using Cresta's example, below is the screen shot of what her client site now looks like with the text link:



But, Wait.... Below is a screen shot of one of my clients and they don't have the text link:



What's going on McAfee? Are you testing landing pages? Anyway, if you look at the fist screen shot, the text link I pointed out now takes you to a listing of all the McAfee Certified Sites. I admit it doesn't take you directly to the McAfee Secure Shopping portal like yesterday, but it does have a rather large listing of alternative sites for you to browse as well as a really nice link smack dab center of the page that will take you to secure shopping portal.

Below is a screen shot of the landing page you go to if you click on the company link as shown in the first image:



If anything new happens, I'll keep you posted. Maybe McAfee Secure is testing landing pages. Maybe they have read our posts and maybe companies have complained. Whatever the reason, as long as traffic stops being diverted to shopping portals, I would think clients will be satisfied.

Labels: controlscan, cresta, hackersafe, mcafee, pillsbury, secure, security, yahoo

It's been a while since my last post. The summer has been slow with major events but I'm currently watching a new event slowly unfold.

Back in July, 2007 I posted about HackerSafe and compared them to ControlScan. (Should you use Hackersafe? ControlScan?) HackerSafe has now merged with McAfee and has been re branded as "McAfee Secure." I won't go into the price increase of using McAfee Secure but will touch on some changes that I and others are seeing.

Last month I was talking with my good friend Cresta Pillsbury who used to work for Hackersafe. She was made redundant and now works for the E-Commerce Merchants Trade Association. We were discussing the HackerSafe merge as well as the benefits of ControlScan. She has recently posted her own blog post about HackerSafe here: What is McAfee Thinking??

Basically, she exposes McAfee's attempt to steal traffic away from there own merchants. I was dumbfounded when I originally read her post because I was completely oblivious to this trick and I usually look for this type of stunt.

Cresta writes, "Anyone who is currently using the McAfee seal on their site is actually paying McAfee to take their traffic and send it to their competitors. What?!! I know but check out this link. www.gothamcityonline.com, now click on the McAfee seal https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.gothamcityonline.com , once you do this their are two different links that will take you to McAfee's secure shopping portal which lists your competitors products. one is the "Attention Shoppers" the other is your company name directly under your URL... So tell me this, how is McAfee helping to increase your conversion if you are spending money for good traffic and they are directing it elsewhere? How is that good business practices?"

I don't need to write any more on this. After you have paid top dollar for Pay Per Click, Email Marketing, SEO, or whatever you do in order to get a customer to your site, McAfee comes along under the guise of "Secure Shopping" and offers them an option to buy from someone else. And you pay McAfee for this service?

Needless to say, I've brought this to the attention of some of my clients and suggest if you use HackerSafe / McAfee Secure, please look into this.

Now, for my rant on third party security......

I'm not too sure I think paying for a third party secure shopping logo is a good idea. I specialize in the design of Yahoo Stores and Yahoo Stores are already secure. I make my own "Secure Shopping" icon and link it directly to Yahoos' Secure Shopping page.

As my previous post on the comparison of HackerSafe and ControlScan stated, we were really testing brand recognition to see if the third party security banner increased conversions or not.

I feel in todays marketplace, PCI compliance mandates security. In order to accept credit cards on your web site you must be PCI compliant. I've filled out several exceptionally long questionnaires sent to me by clients whose banks required this information as well as required the site be scanned by someone other than HackerSafe or ControlScan. (One of the other companies, www.securitymetrics.com has there own "secure" logo as well.) Therefore, I think it's the bank who dictates who ultimately needs to scan the web site. Also, if the web site wasn't secure, they wouldn't be able to accept credit cards.

In closing, while it's a hot topic right now, maybe this will eventually die away as the online credit card industry evolves. Whoever gets to the banks first will win and everyone else will try to hang on and tout increased conversions due to "Brand Loyalty." Wasn't the reason these companies started up in the first place to increase customer perception that the site they are giving financial data to was secure? I admit I'm a fan of the brand McAfee Virus Protection whereas others in my office prefer Norton and some even use AVG. But when I think of McAfee or Norton, I do not think web site security. Nor will I condone McAfee Secure as long as they continue to try to steal my customers by linking to a private shopping portal.

Labels: controlscan, cresta, hackersafe, mcafee, pillsbury, secure, security, yahoo

Last week I posted a quick comment about a recent rash of Google Phishing Emails I have been receiving. I stated that everyone at some time or another has probably received a fake PayPal or Credit Card email stating to log into your account immediately or else it will be shut down or something like that. These are from the bad people who want your login information so they can buy stuff with your money. I was a bit confused why someone would want access to your Google Adwords account because anything you link to could be easily tracked down. One of my clients fell victim to this fraud and I'm still confused as to why.

My client had an ad group created for "Ringtones." His settings were adjusted to accept a $25,000 daily limit with each keyword set at $18.00 max CPC. The fraudster then bought dozens of ringtone related keywords. The puzzling part was the actual ad was jibberish and the desitination URL was an invalid domain. In fact, it was available to purchase. The fraudster was either testing something out or just had too much free time on his hands.

Either way, we worked with Google to fix everything, but the only thing the fraudster really did was waste several hours of time.

I'm not going to post screen shots of the ad or what everything looked like as I don't want to give this guy credit, but we did get the clients password changed and everything seems to be running smoothly now.

So... What did we learn? Change your passwords to something not easily guessed or figured out and most of all, never click on a link to log into your account from anyone! Actually go to the website and login. I would like to think that if your account is about to be shut off, the company would put some kind of message on the site once you logged in without having to click on any links within an email.

For your reference, below are copies of 3 different Google Spoof emails that I have received:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Google Adwords Customer, Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information.
To activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.

In order to activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.
Pease sign into your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update
your billing information.

Once your account is reactivated and your billing information has been processed,
any your ads and campaigns can begin running immediately on Google.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google Adwords Team



Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information. We will reactivate you account after you update your billing information. In order to reactivate your account, please sign it to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update your billing informatio



Dear AdWords Customer,

The ads in this account are not running. All other account activity has been stopped.
Any edits you make here will take effect only if you reactivate the account.
If you would like to reactivate your account, please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your billing information.

Labels: adwords, google, phishing

I just wanted to write a quick post pertaining to a rash of Google Phishing emails I've been receiving lately. Everyone at some time or another has probably received a fake PayPal or Credit Card email stating to log into your account immediately or else it will be shut down or something like that. These are from the bad people who want your login information so they can buy stuff with your money.

Apparently they now want to increase traffic to their websites by writing fake Google Adwords ads from your account. Anyway, whatever the reason, be careful.

Here are copies of 3 different Google Spoof emails that I have received lately:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Google Adwords Customer, Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information.
To activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.

In order to activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.
Pease sign into your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update
your billing information.

Once your account is reactivated and your billing information has been processed,
any your ads and campaigns can begin running immediately on Google.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google Adwords Team



Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information. We will reactivate you account after you update your billing information. In order to reactivate your account, please sign it to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update your billing informatio



Dear AdWords Customer,

The ads in this account are not running. All other account activity has been stopped.
Any edits you make here will take effect only if you reactivate the account.
If you would like to reactivate your account, please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your billing information.

Labels: adwords, google, phishing

Google will be updating it's display URL policy beginning April 1st. This change marks the beginning of a stricter stance on display URLs. No more re-directs or vanity URL's will be allowed. Google states that this policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers.

Basically, the new rules state the display URL will need to match the destination URL. Most exceptions that were allowed before will no longer be approved.

Here are a few examples that will not be approved:

www.Google.co.uk - this URL leads to a different site

www.Gogle.com - this URL simply redirects to www.Google.com

www.Gooogle.com - this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.Google.com
Google will also not allow the use of multiple domains or branding and vanity URLs.

What about Yahoo Tracking URLs?
Google understands that many advertisers utilize tracking URLs within the destination field of their ads. Therefore, if the URL of your landing page matches that of your display URL, your ads will be approved.

For example:
Display URL: www.mydomain.com/widget
Destination URL: http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?yhst1234567+a1B2C3D4E5+widget.html
--> Landing page URL: www.mydomain.com would be acceptable

Display URL: www.mydomain.com/widget
Destination URL: http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?yhst1234567+a1B2C3D4E5+widget.html
--> Landing page URL: http://store.yahoo.com would not be acceptable

Are sub-domains or extra text still acceptable?
Yes, the use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.

For example, display URLs such as the following:
sub.google.com
google.com/extratext
www.google.com/extratext
would all be acceptable for the landing page URL below, as the top-level domain of google.com is matched:
http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous

Finally, note that you don't have to change your ads. Existing ads within your account will not be immediately affected by this change. However, if Google receives complaints regarding specific violations of this policy, they will review and take the appropriate action. (Usually at 5:00pm on a Friday night). I would however, suggest that everyone check their account for potential blatant violations.

For more information regarding the update, look at the Google Blog

Labels: adwords, google, ppc, tracking

A few new features have been announced from Yahoo. One of which spurred this blog entry. I normally don't blog about regular updates as other people already do that. But imagine my surprise when I received my American Express bill and saw several hundred dollars worth of credits! I didn't have to do anything either, it happens automatically. Very Cool!

OPEN from American Express: 5% discount for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Yahoo! Search Marketing with your American Express Business Card

Through this partnership, small business owners can use their Business Card to automatically reduce their costs of doing business with Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yahoo! Small Business services. Business Cardmembers will receive a 5% discount on Yahoo! Search Marketing's online advertising and promotion services in addition to Yahoo! Small Business's comprehensive, easy to use services, including Web site hosting, e-commerce, business e-mail, and domain name registration.

OPEN Savings is a benefit embedded within all American Express Business Cards. American Express Business Cardmembers simply need to use their credit or charge card for purchases with any OPEN Savings partner to take advantage of discounts. The savings will automatically appear on the Cardmember's monthly statement and can be tracked when accessing an account at www.open.com. OPEN Savings discounts are calculated on the full transaction amount, including any taxes and surcharges. Terms and conditions apply.

Since I mentioned one, I feel obligated to mention another......

American Express CID Codes

The payment gateway that Yahoo! Store uses, First Data Merchant Services (FDMS) Nashville Platform, now supports CID (Card Identification) codes used by American Express credit cards. Using the CID functionally give you added security and can qualify your transactions for better rates from American Express. Merchants who would like to accept American Express as a Payment Method with the CID code on their Stores will need to publish their order settings with the proper risk tool setting once this functionality has been released.

Labels: amex, cid