Google

This time it is an SEO 2.0 test.

Looks like the BIG G is now the little g

I have so far upgraded 2 Wordpress blogs today, made a post afterwards, pinged google, but neither has been indexed in blog search yet.

Prior to upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.1 a new post would be indexed in google blog search within 2 minutes, this is a 3rd upgrade to see if this post gets picked up.

Update: Obviously not a Wordpress problem, this post was picked up within a minute.

I was looking around Tim Berners-Lee Virtual Library today and was surprised to see lots of links to commercial sites and a number of This page is sponsored by pages.

Is Tim Berners-Lee now selling links?

After being AWOL for 2 years Sim64 suddenly appeared in the SERPS again this evening. Whether it is just temporary, or whether all filters have been lifted time will tell.

I set up a very small highy targeted AdWords campaign last week, very niche but with a cost per click around the £1.00 mark.

On the landing page I obviously have the product, some info and a telephone number which is set up to receive calls about the product.

Who should call the number today? A Lycos representative trying to get me to take out sponsored advertising with them. So not only did I have the experience of hearing the terrible sales pitch (to a TPS registered phone number) I also probably got charged for the rep clicking my AdWords ad.

Noticed a strange favicon when using google.co.uk this morning.

No idea what it is yet, but are about to see if I can find out more.

After seeing the first 2 google doodles for Christmas 2007 I still don’t know what they are supposed to represent.

Read an interesting thread in a Legal newsroup on Usenet today.

A poster had brought an item for £325 from an online retailer using their Google checkout facility. The goods arrived 2 weeks later but were not as described and faulty. The poster attempted to contact the retailer only to find the website had gone, emails were unanswered and the postal address was fake.

He initially used the Google checkout mediation service which failed as the vendor could not be traced, he was then told by Google to continue his attempt to contact the vendor or ask his credit card company for a charge back from the vendor.

Now this is where the catch comes in.

The credit card company couldn’t issue a charge back against the vendor because the vendor wasn’t the person who charged the card.
The people who had charged the card were Google so any charge back could only be against them, but as the service google provided was money transfering and this had not been the problem, it meant the poster could not claim the money back of them either.

What in theory this means is that whenever you buy anything online via Google Checkout you automatically lose the security that credit cards provide against bad purchases.

Be aware of this next time you make an online purchase and ensure you read the small print of the Google Checkout terms and conditions.

Doing a search on google today I came accross a site that when following the link from Google was redirecting to a malware site.

The search term used on Google was xxxxxx and the site in question is xxxxxx

The strange thing is, when going direct to the site, or when going via any other search engine there is no problem. The problem only occurs if you search for xxxxxx on google and either click on the result or click on the cached version of the page.

Does this mean google has been hijacked and is redirecting to the malware site, or is the problem more likely to be with xxxxxx?