I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. My Twitter stream is my RSS.  Below is a compilation of sites that make me better at what I do. They cover the gamut of posts, tools and resources that someone new to social media or not, should investigate and bookmark and then share with others who might benefit.

1) This first post title 30 top blogs for social media updates is pretty good, simply because there were a few blogs (not many) that I did not know about. As well, the post also contained some links to other worthy posts.

2) If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media and I do. This post rocks it contains video interviews with Vanessa Fox-pay attention to her video, she brings up a lot of solid valid points about search and social- As well as Lee Odden who stresses that you cannot ignore the intersection of search and social.

3) Check out the rankings of the Big Money Facebook 50 of the best brands utilizing Facebook. How many are you fans of?

4) A couple of weeks ago Shel Israel did an interview with E-consultancy promoting his new book Twitterville. If you don’t know who Shel is, Google his name. Pay attention to the examples Shel mentions in the interview.

5) Neoformix is a cool data visualization site, which for me helps in dumbing things down for yours truly so that I can sometimes understand them better.

6) Check out the 11 players in this post on the  brief history of social network enterprise collaboration tools How many did you know about?

7) Sally Falkow is really a smart person, she recently cranked a pretty sweet slide deck

8. I’m a big fan of the Inbound Marketing University (IMU) they offer free marketing retraining programs for marketing professionals—as well as marketers between jobs—looking to gain new skills to get ahead in the competitive workforce.

9) Here’s a quick one, How popular is your website in the web 2.0 world?

10) Lastly I thought this was cool, monitor Twitter lists for keywords with Listimonkey

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The third annual Infocamp took place in Seattle on Oct 10th and 11th. It is a workshop that explores the field of Usability and User Experience lead by professionals, peers and those interested in the UX field. The conference was at capacity with 350 participants; no surprise with registration fees of only $10 for students or $50 for professionals. Keynote speakers were Axel Roesler, a professor from the University of Washington and Vanessa Fox who is an authority on Google Search Engines. The event gave participants the opportunity learn and discuss the latest in the UX field and there was ample time to network with fellow professionals. I enjoyed the event and found the casual atmosphere to be a great place for discussions and to network with great people.
Infocamp is looking to expand into other cities, more info can be found on their website.

http://www.infocamp.info/

Although this site gets a decent amount of traffic – more than I ever expected – it comes almost exclusively from search engines and flows to just a couple of posts, the ones dealing with the films I’ve Loved You So Long and Let The Right One In. (If you Google “let the right one in crotch shot” I’m one of the top results. If you’re wondering why people would search for that, you obviously haven’t seen the movie.) I also get some visits to my articles on Nancy Mitford and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. After that, the stats fall off fairly precipitously.

So it doesn’t really matter what I write here; most days I’m talking only to myself. Still, I’m always reluctant to use my personal blog to promote the company I work for. I don’t want to seem like one of those cheeseballs who can’t separate his work and private life.

So I’m not going to talk about my employers, or even mention their name. But I will mention that I’ve just finished some promotional cartoons that turned out pretty well. They feature several well-known figures from the tech world, including Vanessa Fox and Robert Scoble; if those names don’t mean anything to you, that’s alright, I’d never heard of them either until I started working on these cartoons.

What else? I’m reading One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich right now; it’s great, but I don’t think it’ll give me anything to blog about. But I’ve got some thoughts on Robert Ferrigno’s Prayers for the Assassin, the new Star Trek movie, and the movie criticism of the Weekly Standard’s John Podhoretz, which I hope to get down soon.

M.

Brendan, Allan, and Jeff were down at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last month, and they wandered around with Allan’s new videocamera asking people, “What have you done to make your house a home?” They brought me back the footage and said, “Here, make some promotional videos.” But, being a glutton for work, I thought instead I would make some promotional cartoons.

Here’s Vanessa Fox talking about reclaiming her home office space:

Robert Scoble talks about guys and their toy rooms:

This is Alice Myerhoff of Inman News, bein’ organic and what-not:

Jennifer Pahlka, general manager of the Web 2.0 Expo, spends all of her money and all of her time on her house:

PS. Some of our visitors might be wondering, What the heck is MyFrontSteps?

So, I think I’m done being mopey and shit for a while, which means I’m pissed. Not pissed in the British sense, but in the American sense where I’ll get pissed in the British sense and then go on a alcohol and gasoline fueled rampage because I’m pissed in the American sense. Mmmm, nothing like the taste of gin on the tongue and the smell of 82 octane on the nose. But anyways, yeah, I actually got on the interweb and read and junk (turns out panhandling at Starbucks is GREAT. The people have more money than they do at the library and you can get wi-fi. Who the hell panhandles at the library? Dumb people, that’s who.  Poor people go to the library. Rich people buy books, poor people borrow them. Though at the library you can look at as much totally fucked up porn and they won’t toss you out. Try that in front of the Starbucks, they aren’t so cool with it. BUT, you will get called “Sir”).

What was it I read? You might be thinking it’s something about Dougie Heil and everyone all happy and shit that he went SES or that he’s calling black hats white hats or whatever. Surprisingly, that only annoyed me. I mean, c’mon people. Who gives a fuck what Doug Heil thinks?!??! Motherfucker sold out and spoke on a panel he’s at a conference he’s always dogged. I’m sure he spun it somehow to make it look like a victory for him, but he’s not as big a punk as the people that embraced him and are looking to him for validation. You want my opinion – more people should have taken the Rae Hoffman approach to that shit. But anyways, that isn’t what really pissed me off.

What really pissed me off was a Vannessa Fox article about some punk ass ragging on the industry (yes, I realize I’m way fucking behind if I just read this). Sure, we all know who the number one hater is and honestly, it seems like she’s just trying to get back at some guy for a failed romance. And we’re all aware of the pluses and minuses of this shit and we all wring our little hands about it and shit. Whatever. But what pissed me off was his response to Vanessa’s thoughtful and well-written post (yes, I remember throwing my fanboydom to Rebecca Kelley, but I just can’t quit her! Besides, this guy comes off as a bully and a dick).

Okay, first off, dude, if she gave your show a plug, the worst thing to do is to throw it back in her face. She said she had fun on that shit. I was thinking of trying to get the rabbit ears to tune that shit in until I read your fucking comment and remembered reading it was your fucking show she was going on.

Next, making it so a friggin’ search engine can comprehend what your shit-ass site about is evil? Who the hell is this guy pissed at – SEO or Google? From what I understand, Google is trying to make SEO unnecessary. SEOs on the other hand are trying to make Google work in their favor. And this makes them in cahoots or whatever the hell it is this guy is going on and on about? Umm, if this guy is some sort of cranky tech journalist, motherfucker needs to learn to research or something. And maybe it’s more obvious what he’s all worked up about in his articles, but frankly, I didn’t read them (I’m lazy and that’s when the Starbucks assholes got the police involved in the whole panhandling/looking at porn thing).

Third – he’s pissed about Google’s “non-repeatable searches” and then pissed that their shit is getting gamed? For reals? To me, that’d say they’re working at getting the most relevant searches for a query at a given time and working against it getting gamed. I mean, shit, I don’t want to see the same fucking results for a search I did six years ago. And if the results were shitty, I sure as hell don’t want to see them an hour later. And from what I understand, this guy thinks their results are shitty anyways because they chock full of parked pages or something (which, doesn’t that mean they’re not changing if you keep seeing these pages?).

Fourth – was it really necessary to be a dick to Ms. Fox? Yeah, I’m hung up on that. She gives a nice, measured response to his criticisms and he’s a dick to her. Fuck that. Don’t get pissed at her because Google is shitty.

Fifth – using Bush one-liners from Katrina is sooooo 2007. C’mon, Dvorak, you’re smarter than that.

Sixth – well, there isn’t a sixth. I mean, sure, he apparently bags on the industry, but like I said, that shit ain’t new. And even some of the shit he hates is old news. YAWN.

So anyways, I have a new addition to the enemies list. John Dvorak, you’re dead to me. Though, to be honest, until I read Vanessa’s post, I didn’t even know you existed, and it looks like we might have some common ground, and I’ll probably pawn the company machine in a week or two and not even be on the interweb, so it’s not it’s a major loss. Besides, you could probably give two shits about this hell hole awesome blog anyways.

Anyways, so yeah.  I’m not a big fan of this guy right now.

Search Engine Optimization is at the same time a simple concept (help the search engines find and rank your pages) and a very complex one (proper use of redirection when changing domain names, Google downranking, duplicate content and hundreds more topics that are covered online in many places and also at conferences like the SES Conference Series, Webmasterworld PubCon, or the SMX Conferences.  

Arguably the best source for basic SEO information is Matt Cutts’ blog, and he always has great summaries of the conferences at which he gives talks.    Here’s a great post from Matt today after Danny Sullivan’s SMX Seattle Conference.   Google has added some information to their famous (and infamous) webmaster Guidelines, which should be read by every webmaster as they are the best *basic* information about how to structure a site to be ranked properly.   You’ll also want to read Matt’s SEO posts which offer a lot more specifics and technical advice.  

Although several years ago you would *also* have been well advised to read up on some of the tricks of the trade such as various schemes for keyword optimization, I would argue that for most webmasters tricks are more likely to be counterproductive than productive.   This is a really rich topic because there remain many techniques that fall into a sort of gray area of optimization where ranks are affected, but crossing the Google draws between acceptable techniques and unacceptable can lead to severe penalties.   Since Google does not draw a clear objective line we have the ongoing gray area of optimization. 

Many SEO techniques relate to *linking* strategies and *keyword optimization*.     It is an area where I believe Google has in many ways fueled the rise of the very content they hate by making the rules too vague and (more importantly) allowed adsense advertising on pages that don’t meet reasonable web quality standards.   Early in the game I was often frustrated when I would improve on a bad page only to have it drop in ranks due to algorithmic quirks.   I soon decided to leave crappy but high ranked pages alone, fearing they’d be downranked if I changed them.  This in turn caused problems as Google tightened up quality standards. Google is great about transparency in several areas, but algorithmic search penalties are not one of them.

I should also say there are some exceptionally good SEO folks out there who always have amazing advice when I bump into them at conferences.    David Naylor and Aaron Wall, and Todd Malicoat all have remarkable insight into the complexities of Google ranking as does Vanessa Fox who used to work for Google and Danny Sullivan who runs the SMX series of SEO Conferences.    My general advice about SEO is to do it yourself or in-house, but there are a handful of people like this who know the game so well that the normal rules about avoiding SEO folks do not apply.

Bill Gates is a crazy motherfucker. Seriously. According to a Vanessa Fox post on the Twitter, apparently Mr. Gates said some crazy-ass shit like “Google image and video searches are OK, but not really innovative compared to Live” (that’s quote’s from Ms. Fox’s Twitter thingy).

Is he fucking crazy?!?!?!?!? Has he ever tried searching fucking Live.com?!?!?!?!?! Am I using too many question and exclamation marks??!?!?!?!??!?!?!

Seriously though – did he really say that shit with a straight face? Every fucking time I try to use fucking Live.com for search I want to kill a motherfucker. Their results are garbage. And I’m no fucking Cuttlett or uber-Google fanboy, but the motherfuckers are doing some shit right. Mr. Gates, you and your buddy Crazy Legs Ballmer should check out what they’re doing down there and take some fucking notes. Or buy a new dictionary so you understand the definition of “innovative”. I mean, you people can’t even figure out how to redirect me to perhaps the correct spelling of a search that I fucked up!!!

It’s shit like this that’s why Microsoft and MSN are going down the shitter. They need to quit huffing their own fumes and just figure out how to not fuck up search. Or Windows. Or Xbox. Or Zune.

In other MSN Sucks News, Ballmer gets egged.

As mentioned for day 1 of the SMX Social Media Conference in Long Beach, Day 2 was equally as impressive.  Day 1 was more of the nuts and blots of the tools available.  Day 2 was more about how we as marketers can use these tools to enhance communities.  And I am careful to use the words “to enhance communities”.  Social Media and Social Marketing should not be about clubbing customers or prospects over the head with shotgun marketing messages.  It should be about creating a conversation, cultivating relationships, and delivering results.

I have pulled from dormancy many of my social web 2.0 accounts now that I have a better context for them.  This includes:

• Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/kstraw - a great way to micro blog and keep contacts informed
• Digg – http://digg.com/ - rate items of interest – articles, blog posts, and more
• Reddit – http://reddit.com/ - reddit is a source for what’s new and popular online.  Vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what’s popular, or submit your own!

All of these are great ways to keep up with information and people.  It also provides opportunities to update others as well.

I enjoyed hearing Jason Calacanis, Randy Woods, Jimmy Wales and Michael Gray.  Too bad Vanessa Fox was not there.

Again, I would highly recommend attending this show for anyone looking to build marketing relationships.

BTW…make sure to get the 4×4 at In-n-Out when in Cali…

Wow, I wasn’t sure if this POS would ever get this far, but it finally did. And yeah, I’m just as surprised as you are. After a brief stint of optimism and, well, cockiness (hell, I was nominated for a couple of awards – can you blame an asshole?), I came back down to earth to realize this is what it is. And what this is is a huge clusterfuck of epic proportions. But it’s my clusterfuck.

Now, do realize that those 10,000 visits are probably from the same four or five people clicking back on a daily basis to see whether or not I’ve been arrested, shit-canned or have given up the ghost. But to those people who keep checking back on a daily basis, thank you.

Speaking of thank you’s, this nightmare would not have gotten as far as it has without the loyalty of my comrades. To these people, who have linked, commented and otherwise given me the reason to dare to dream these big dreams of mediocrity I owe my heartfelt thanks and gratitude. Without them, I would have given this up a while ago.

Comrades and Loyalists
First up is Comrade Syzlak and his search marketing blog, Syzlak SEM. Syzlak has been one of my fiercest critics as one of my fiercest loyalists. When a glitch with WordPress led me to believe I this den of awesomeness had been banned and disabled, Syzlak sprang to action. Comrade Syzlak mounted an underground movement to get the Worst SEO Blog Ever! re-instated. However, as quickly as the rebellion had risen, it died. WordPress sent me an “oopsie” letter and things were quickly brought back to normal.

Also fiercely loyal is Bagel of the humor blog Ration Reality. Unlike Syzlak, she is one of my largest cheerleaders and when it looks like it’s time to put some plywood on the windows, she’s encouraged me to keep churning this crap out. Perhaps it’s because she like the copious amount of linkage, but I never question why. During the revolution that wasn’t a revolution, she also sprang into action and offered her help.

This thank you would suck without including El Tigre. This cat takes a lot of abuse for his love of Tumblr (please come to the light!), but he’s never backed down nor apologized for it. Plus, he’s given me plenty of fodder for the weekly 7. Thanks, El Tigre.

Another loyalist I cannot neglect to thank is JDog. The JDog came out of nowhere and stoked the fire that kept this tire fire burning and stinking up the interweb. Check out his awesome SEM blog and learn some junk.

And then there is Streko, who we give plenty of shit to for never updating his search marketing blog but he always has the time to stop in here and waste some of his precious time. Thanks!

I’d also be remiss for not thanking Miss Melanie for stopping in as much as she does. Another smart person who wades in this gutter on a regular basis, she’s pretty good at flicking me shit here and on the Sphinn. Check out what she has to say at All About Content.

From the Depths of Fanboydom
I also have to thank the folks who’ve put up with my fanboydom. Without these three ladies, I wouldn’t have much to write about. Though I have sullied their good names with my adoration, they haven’t turned me into the local authorities.

Let it be known, I am a Rebecca Kelley Fanboy. Not only does she tolerate my loyalty and requests of hair for a pillow, she’s been known to grace this hellhole with comments and links from SEOmoz (shhhh! Don’t tell the bossman!). Not only have these boosted my spirits, they sent a whole helluva’ lot of traffic this way (well, a lot for me).

I have to also thank Vanessa Fox. The original target of my fanboydom, she took my articles in good humor and didn’t call me an asshole for shifting my loyalty to Rebecca. Plus, she’s even sent a few links my way! Thanks, Vanessa.

Though my official fanboy status goes to Rebecca, I have to give a thank you to Jill Whalen. Good humored and willing to highlight one of my articles on the Sphinn perhaps to the detriment of her professional identity, thank you for the good SEO advice throughout the years.

And To My Readers
I don’t know how you all found this place, but you did, and I appreciate you all coming back time after time. Without you folks, there’s no way in hell I would have gone this far with this thing. I’m not intending to ignore anyone, but a few readers stand out in my mind.

One of which is Matt Davies, who writes seoTunes. I can almost count on seeing his face in my MyBlogLog roll. Thanks for the support and the link!

Also there is Kent Schnepp, who I seem to see less and less of these days but still appreciate his support. Don’t be afraid to waste your time here, Kent! Your clients will never know.

I also can’t forget that guy who works with Rebecca, who stops in on occasion and has promised to do so more often. I’m sure he’ll see this post. And perhaps someday I’ll make an effort to actually learn his name.

And if I’m thanking that guy who works with Rebecca, I better thank that gal who works with Rebecca, Jane Copland. She’s been seen slumming around here on occasion as well.

And finally, last but not least of my loyal readers, there’s the Batwoman, who rarely comments but who’s presence is felt. Thank you.

So, I’m guessing there’s a lot of other people I have to thank, like those at the Rubber Chicken Awards and the Semmy’s. Yeah, you all didn’t think this thing was worth a crap, and you’re probably right. But thank you for the attention and your consideration. It’s made this even more rewarding.

Well, I know I’ve forgotten some folks, but hey, when you’re working on your seventh g-n-t at 6:30 in the evening, you can’t be expected to remember every damn thing. But I want to thank everyone who has stopped in. I know it’s pretty fucking cornball, but I’m drunk and sentimental. But thank you. Thank you all.

So, Comrade Syzlak is lucky enough to live in Portland, where there was some sort of SEM/SEO conference going on, which he attended and got to rub elbows with all sorts of fancy people. Lucky bastard. Oh well. It’s just as well. It’s not like I had a clean shirt or anything.

Anyways, he told me he got to meet no other than Rebecca Kelley. Rebecca fucking Kelley!!! And he said that she really does read this thing!!! Even if he lying just to keep me from throwing myself in front of a train, still!!! He got to talk to her!!!!!

I think the only thing that could have made hearing that better is to then hear that Vanessa Fox was there and that she heard Syz and Miss Rebecca Kelley talking about this hell hole and then getting into a fight over my fanboydom. That would have been awesome. Super awesome. And then to have Todd Friesen and Greg Boser also show up and try to break up that fight and then say they read this bullshit too. And then they get in a fight. Then that fight gets so bad that there’s people being thrown through the window and shit getting broken. And then right before it gets out of hand, Syzlak steps in and asks them “WWSEOHD?”, to which they’d say, “What the fuck are you talking about?” And then Syzlak, would have to show them his rubber bracelet and say, “The SEO Hack would say instead of fighting amongst ourselves over his awesomeness, we should unite to light a dumpster on fire and partake in the drinking of the gin.” And then they’d all go out, light a dumpster on fire, get drunk and then light some more shit in Portland on fire.

And in my opinion, there’s no bigger compliment than having a town drunkenly burnt to the ground in your honor. Yes, a boy can dream. A boy can dream.

Rebecca Kelley!!!!!

. . . . I got nothing.

Sure, I could go on about how hard it’s been to “quit” Ms. Fox or how awesome Ms. Kelley is for paying attention to li’l ol’ me. But you’ve all already heard that.

So, since I’ve got nothing, how about this. You give me something to rant about. Afraid to go off about how your co-worker takes a nasty dump and doesn’t use the spray stuff? Let me get it off your chest for you. Sick of all the people calling you Stinky McStinkerton because you took a nasty dump that the smelly spray stuff couldn’t cover? Let me air your grievance. Want to jump in a car and drive to Redmond to light Microsoft’s headquarters on fire? I’ve got a can of gas. But if you’re just thinking out loud, let me shout it out for you. Mad that you looked for poop porn and only found this crap? Let me at it. Tired of loud mouth assholes doing nothing but ranting and bitching? Let me be the loudmouth asshole for you.

All you gotsta’ do is leave you gripe in my comments, or, if you can find my email address on the godforsaken thing, email it to me. If you can’t find it, then here you go (seohack(at)gmail(dot)com). I’ll pick something and if you like, I’ll even keep it anonymous if you like.

Just like a tick keeps you from getting too much blood in your system, I’m hear to keep you from having too much bitching in your system. So let’s let the good times roll!

Someone pointed out yesterday that the SEMMY The Worst SEO Blog Ever! has been nominated for is going to be judged by none other than Vanessa Fox.

Vanessa Fox!

You don’t understand what this does for my fanboydom.

Already I’m imagining receiving my huge-ass winner’s cup up on the stage. I see myself dressed up in an awesome blue and orange NASCAR fire suit while Vanessa hands me my much deserved trophy while Chris Winfield (he’s the other judge, FYI) starts spraying me and the crowd with champagne from one of those giant bottles. Somehow, the trophy is already full of that magical blend of Slurpee and gin. I take a giant drink from it, and with nuclear green slush pouring off my chin, I hoist the cup in the air. The crowd goes ape shit. Camera flashes ricochet light off her gold-sequined dress and she and Chris start clapping. All of a sudden I’m getting showered with flowers and panties and chew cans. Naturally, I protect the contents of the Cup of Awesomeness from all the debris (really, who wants to drink chew, used undies and flowers?) and then take another chug. Somehow I manage to fight off a brainfreeze. After all, I am the embodiment of all things awesome.

Then, as the crowd quiets and I take a more genteel chug from the gigantic Cup of Awesomeness, Vanessa pats me on the back and says, “Mr. SEO Hack, you have ascended to the pinnacle of awesomeness. Congratulations, sir. Well done.”

And there it is – confirmation of my awesomenss from Vanessa Fox. And for once, it’s positive attention! Double bonus points.

Michael McDonal de WebProNews ha realizado una entrevista en vídeo con Matt Cutts y Vanessa Fox. La duración del vídeo es de 15 minutos y habla sobre la reciente reducción del Pagerank a consecuencia de la venta de enlaces y el tema de los subdominios como carpetas secundarias. Para mi gusto constructivo…toda noticia sobre seo resulta interesante.

El vídeo no lo he podido incluir aquí, lo podeís encontrar en Searchengineland

Wow.

Apparently, the perverts are figuring out what this blog is actually about or the geniuses at Google have finally added some sort of relevance filter into their algo and discovered *gasp* that the Worst SEO Blog Ever! isn’t actually about “poop porn” (at this time, it’s sitting at position 7 =( ).

However, looking at the search stats provided by WordPress for last Sunday, it appears that this shit hole is starting to get found for some SEO-relevant keywords as well. Here’s what I saw:

Yesterday (11/25/2007)
Search Views
poop porn 4
dan sullivan sucks dick 1
porno poop 1
assholes 1
drinking piss from asshole 1
vanessa fox ass shots 1

Seeing these various search terms got me to thinking, “What or who is using those search terms to find this place?” As a result, I came up with a term by term analysis (hehehehe, you ever notice you can’t spell “analysis” without “anal”?) of the kind of person is searching for this phrase or who specifically is searching for this term! Sound like fun? Then let’s play the game!

poop porn – I’m guessing these four people are male, live with mom and like some of the stuff found on Sticky Butter (something very disturbing and very specific that is on that site). These people are either clicking on this page and using it as a “beard” to keep their sicko fetish under wraps or get very pissed off when they discover that there are no picture or movies of “pooping” or “porn” and instead see there is only “bullshit”.

dan sullivan sucks dick – The kind of person that would search this is either envious of Mr. Sullivan’s success and impact in the search industry or believes that Mr. Sullivan is some sort of evil genius that is using all of us like little pawns to make himself wealthy while spreading mis-information and making “black hat SEO” tactics palatable and accepted to search marketers and optimizers. There’s only one person that fits that profile that I can think of – Dougie Heil.

porno poop – This poor bastard was one of the four other searchers that searched for “poop porn”. Like the others, he was disappointed and performed another search. Unlike the others, he was dumb enough to click on the listing for this place showing in the SERPs. Fucking idiot.

assholes - This one is easy. It’s my father trying to figure out what my brother and I were doing for Thanksgiving and why we weren’t at his house and why we didn’t call.

drinking piss from asshole – This one is tough. I suspect it’s male. However, I also suspect this person isn’t like the “poop porn” boys and may be trying to see what bizarre shit turns them on instead of knowing already how sick he is. I also suspect this pervo is from the “don’t be judgemental” camp. If not, it’s someone who’s looked at so much porn online that they’ve become desensitized to the most random, bizarre shit that can be found online.

vanessa fox ass shots – Okay, first off, Ms. Fox, I apologize that some sick fuck thought they could find these pics of you on this site. With that, on to the analysis. Apparently, this person is in the search industry and familiar with Vanessa Fox and is perhaps a VFFB. Next, I’m assuming this person is male, and probably in his forties if not fifties. I’m also assuming this person has a crush on Ms. Fox and may troll in her comments occasionally. So, using those clues and a little speculation, without a doubt I’m guessing this was Doug Heil again.

So there you have it. If you ever need any help deciphering the kind of person that’s using weird-ass search terms to find your site, you know who to turn to.

No really, he did.

Everybody’s favorite former Google girl is on the move again, though she is staying in Seattle. Unlike last time when she told the big G to get bent (okay, she didn’t, but it’s fun to pretend she did, isn’t it?), my computer isn’t telling me to piss up a tree and I can actually follow the action! Okay, so there isn’t much action either. But those are small details. Really small, insignificant details. So small you can’t consider it lying. At any rate, it was nice to actually get to read it instead of hear all about it second hand from everybody’s favorite SEM guy.

As I read her post, I began to wonder what this meant for the search community. Then, just like all good assholes, I said to myself, “Fuck the search community! What’s this mean for me?!?!?” Oh, and don’t get all high and mighty and act like you’re all selfless and junk. You know you did the same damn thing.

So, without any further hesitation, here’s what jumped to mind:

1. In her post, she promised to write more. Thank goodness. I was thinking I was gonna’ have to start becoming a Rebecca Kelley fan boy.

2. Will I get to see more Dougie Heil trolling around in her blog? More writing means I just might!

3. Unfortunately, more Buffy the Vampire Slayer at conferences. But a bastard can still hope that it may mean more Princess Bride. Don’t take away this bastard’s dreams!

4. VFFB’s and other associated SEO geekboys will now have something to bug Ms. Fox about. All those veiled attempts to talk real estate never worked anyways.

5. Google fanboys and girls will have to continue fantasizing about Matt Cutts in a thong bikini under that Google t-shirt and jean set. I don’t know what it has to do with me, but it did cross my mind. I suspect some of these people were secretly hoping Vanessa would go back to Google and it would be like Mom and Dad getting back together again. But it ain’t. Dad’s still lonely, drunk, angry and looking for love in all the wrong places while Mom has found a guy five years younger that rides a motorcycle and the kiddos are constantly conspiring to get the two back together ala Haley Mills in the Parent Trap. You’re living in the past!!!!! Give up the dream!!!!! It’s all your fault!!!!! Aren’t you happy for Mom? Well, aren’t you, you inconsiderate little shits?

6. Hmm. Carne asada burrito or spicy pork tacos?

7. New domain for VanessaFoxNude.com = pain in my ass. Memorizing stuff sucks.

At any rate, good luck at the new place, Vanessa. We all look forward to seeing more writing and stuff.

Okay, so Ms. Fox calls it quits at Google, and some people freak out, and some people, like me yawn. So I put together a post about her quitting, make fun of some people and generally show my ass.

Then she comments on my blog. And says she like the Princess Bride. And I realize I didn’t wish her luck. So, I’m an asshole. But nonetheless, this asshole wishes you luck at Zillow, Vanessa. By the looks of your fan base, it was a wise marketing decision as well as personnel decision. They’re lucky. My company is stuck with me.

Okay, so now that I’ve tried to show that I’m less of an asshole, here comes the scary part. I may be a Vanessa Fox fan boy. You could consider me a part of the paunch-bellied contingent.

After I went back and read her blog, which I always liked because it actually had real life information you could use, I realized I might be a fan boy. Well, maybe fan boy is too strong of a word. Because for everything I thought was cool, there was something I didn’t think was as cool.

This might turn me into a fan boy: the Princess Bride
Perhaps not: Not as much content about the Princess Bride as there is with Buffy

This might turn me into a fan boy: Stealing someone’s pickup to haul boxes
Perhaps not: Not just starting one huge-ass fire with said boxes

This might turn me into a fan boy: This post
Perhaps not: This post

This might turn me into a fan boy: Pictures of Alison Hannigan
Perhaps not: They’re in relation to Buffy (it isn’t that I have anything against Buffy, I just never got into it. And I got tired of hearing about it all the time. Kind of like Pink Floyd and living in the dorms – there’s some shit you just get your fill of.)

This might turn me into a fan boy: The ability to admit there’s questionable music on her iPod
Perhaps not: Instead of it being butt-rock it’s Britney Spears, NSync and Nick Carter (though to her credit, her reasoning as to why is pretty good.)

This might turn me into a fan boy: A very good post about questioning her existence
Perhaps not:TWITTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So as you can see, while it’s obvious I’m an asshole, whether or not I’m a Vanessa Fox fan boy is still debatable. Would it be so bad to be one? No, not really. But if I found out she liked shooting road signs and drinking cheap beer (which, incidentally, go together quite well), I’d probably be one. A HUUUUGE one.

As mentioned in my post about SMX Seattle, I noticed there was all sorts of male attention being paid to the Vanessa Fox person from Google by what appeared to be a motley crew of the balding, the lonely and the paunch bellied after she spoke in one of the session. It was like she was the Jenna Jameson of search or something. Or maybe the Mae West.

So, last week while my computer was taking the big shit, apparently she went and declared her leaving Google. I didn’t know jack about it until my buddy, Syzlack, gave me the news. See, believe it or not, this industry doesn’t get reported on the news. Amazing, huh? I was totally unaware until I get this IM basically saying, “Hey Dumbass! Where you been? You hear about Vanessa?”

My first reaction, was, “Wow! She left powerful overlords who see and know all the good folks at Google! Good on her! Way to stick it the Man! She must’ve found a wonderful opportunity. ” My second reaction was, “Hmmm.” My third reaction was, “Maybe today I shall work in the nude.” My fourth reaction was, “Nah, I hate it when my ass gets stuck to the leather on my chair. And I feel self-conscious.”

Anyways, after a while, I finally went and read her post. Then I got to thinking about what this might mean for the search industry. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Vanessa will finally be able to go to a frickin’ conference and eat her lunch.

2. Since she’s moving on to Zillow, there will be a sudden shift of interest to the real estate industry by the BLPB crew.

3. NO MORE LISTENING TO HER GO ON AND ON ABOUT BUFFY the fucking VAMPIRE SLAYER AT SEO CONFERENCES!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, c’mon! There were way better shows out there! Discuss how getting banned is like FLCL or something! Or how it’s like maggots pouring out of the belly of a carcass. Or how it’s like waking up in a crappy hotel somewhere after a night of drinking cheap liquor and finding you bedded a homeless person. Just something more relevant to us!

4. The lack of Google attire on her back makes more sense.

5. Search boy geekdom will have to find a new girl to worship. I recommend this fine lady. Though I don’t know if there are any pics to back up her good-lookingness.

6. Unless Google finds another attractive spokeswoman, Yahoo! will suddenly become more relevant.

7. The rest of us will continue to not give a shit.

I’ve just attended my first SES (Search Engine Strategies) conference in Chicago and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was really great to get to meet the search gurus as well as the major search engine players. A special thank you goes out to the Googlies for taking suggestions for improvements of their phenomenal webmaster tools. Also, welcome to Trevor (from Google) who attended his first SES conference also (sorry for hounding you, but 10 out of 10 for not giving anything away… obviously need more beer next time). Vanessa Fox (the brilliant (and very nice) webmaster tools project owner/manager), as a friendly reminder, this is what I think would be a great addition:

• “My URLs are case sensitive:” with a ” o Yes o No ” option. (and Yes Adam, I promise to only use lower case going forward).
• New tool for specifying “hey, these are all my new URLs, please get rid of any others for this domain which are not in this list.”
• Header checker. In a similar fashion to how you have the robots.txt checker, offer a url entry tool which will return the header value. While this feature is available on other websites, it would be cool to not have to go elsewhere.
• Header download. Would be great to have a download tool for all urls for myDomain and their associated header value.
• Page rank summaries. Create a tool similar to my sitePRtracker.com (whoops, there’s that case sensitivity again) which shows the summary of PR Values for a website. Not just the “top ranking page” (which never seems correct – yes, yes, I know… yours is more up to date) but a simple break down of how many of each of the 10 page rank values the site has, with a total page rank score (sum of all values). For now, please will have to use my free tool at www.sitePRtracker.com (subtle plug – but it’s free, so why not?)

I also wanted to thank Local Search for their fantastic party (definitely the best one I think) and was a ton of fun. The band was awesome. If I had to pick one, my only complaint for the $2K (per attendee) conference is the abysmal food at lunch… come on SES, sort it out. The pretzel on the last day was the icing on the cake (if only there was a cake).

My only suggestion for improvement would be to video each session next time which can then be made available to all paid attendees after the conference. There were so many great sessions; it was just frustrating having to choose one over the other and not knowing what you missed. Yes SES, I realize video production is costly, but even if it was just sound and the slides or something… I’m sure there would be plenty of sponsors out there willing to help?

I almost forgot to mention the Yahoo party with their Yahootinis (cute). The band rocked (literally) and as this video will show “Bill Gates” should have been paid for the entertainment! Very funny…

If there is one thing which I learned at the conference, it is how valuable “Social Media” can be and how anyone with any interest in SEM should have a thorough understanding of it. As a result I’m now at the airport waiting for my flight and am just about to post this to my new (and first) webpress blog. Let’s see how it goes

Stay in touch everyone and if anyone has any feedback on the free sitePRtracker.com tool, please let me know. Also, let me know if you think of another cool tool you want and can’t find it out there, as I enjoy building them.

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