Posts filed under 'Facts And Figures'
UPONG, everyone’s 3rd favourite fictional organisation, today released valuable research outlining the growing incidence of what UPONG refers to as GIV: Google Immunetoranking Virus.
This terrible and potentially financially deadly condition threatens SERP destruction for the unwitting Victims.
“GIV has a large number of symptoms that range from complete disappearance to a reduction in reported links right through to the site appearing to have no pages indexed”, said newly appointed imagined UPONG Treasurer Sarah Emma O’Guru.
“In the last few years,” S.E. O’Guru said, “the number of incidents of GIV has increased dramatically. When the first instances where discovered, in a small group of 12 otherwise healthy and active Homosexual pr0n sites based in New York, we thought it was an isolated occurrence of a bad data push. Since then, the disease has spread to both Africa and India, with Nigerian 419 sites hit particularly hard, with 1 out of every 4 being a sufferer.”
Not much is known of the root cause of the illness, but it appears to be a disease that infects via links. So far, prevention is the only known cure, and the application of a link condom at both ends of a link is vital.
“Without it”, S.E. O’Guru said, “Both sites can potentially fall victim. Worse still, it can take years for the illness to show signs, and seemingly healthy sites can suddenly develop AIGS (Aint Indexed at Google Syndrome). All site owners need to be careful right now, because only one link partner needs to have it, and a whole network of sites can be brought down.”
The saddest stories of all are of the innocent, newly registered baby sites who are born with GIV, due to previous owners callous misuse. For such sites, a superhuman effort may help them last a while, but eventually they fall victim to AIG, and a long, slow, lingering SERP death, bereft of traffic.
The UPONG research also turned up several illnesses related to, and often misdiagnosed as, GIV.
One such illness, referred to as Assburger Syndrome, is a disease that affects many people. This illness is characterised by a misunderstanding of how Search Engines work, and a subsequent obsessive watching of one keyword, reloaded every ten minutes or so, for signs of ranking improvement. Assburger sufferers also exhibit an increasing anti-social lifestyle, predicated upon finding “patterns” in SERPs that no one else can see.
“Assburgers”, S.E. O’Guru told isos. “Is an all too common affliction that affects many wannabe online business owners. The only real cure is to get these people away from there computers and out socialising, where they can start to achieve real, demonstrable improvements in their lives.”
The second illness often mistakenly diagnosed as GIV was Enserpalitis. This disease is characterised by a swelling of rankings for a brief period of time, with a subsequent return to normal traffic and ranking levels shortly thereafter. Such bouts leave the sufferer unrealistically hopeful and reliant upon the traffic, and can lead to massive monetary loses when the rankings and traffic subside to more realistic levels.
UPONG treasurer S.E. O’Guru said that UPONG are committed to not only cataloguing such illnesses, but also actively working towards a cure. “At this time, the talented and brilliant people in our underground SEO bunker are researching potential coding solutions that we feel may delay, and in some cases reverse, the effects of GIV. One hopeful technology is IPv6 research, which we feel may offer greater flexibility and resistance to the IPv4 dieasses. Until then, prevention is the only cure, and link condoms are the absolute bare minimum of protection required, with link abstinence a more effective, and much safer, option.”
September 5th, 2006
Sometimes, a brilliant and insightful idea is ditched because of “creative differences” between me, myself and occasionally Scottie. I relented to myself on this one, but have regretted it ever since. That is why I am releasing a “Director’s Cut” version of the classic post: “Keyword Density Of Sandbox Articles Apparently Proportional To Density Of Authors“.
Compare and see which one you, our ever growing number of quasi-interested readers, prefer. isos: taking vanity blogs to a whole nuther level!
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UPONG, in a continuation of their stated goal of doing cutting edge SEO market research and intelligence to provide more of the research
UPONG members couldn’t be arsed doing for a public that couldn’t care less, has revealed the first extensive study into articles on the so called Google Sandbox phenomenon.
| Overall Issues |
Score |
| Average Originality of thought |
2.67 |
| Average Deviation From Norm |
0.34 |
| Average Reading Age of Articles: |
8.47 |
| Statistical validity of Theories |
3.42% |
“So many articles are written on this contentious issue”, El Presidente Michael said. “and we at UPONG felt that, while the world didn’t need Yet Another Sandbox Theory (YAST for short), it sure as s#$@ needed an analysis of all the so called analysis. And I think you will agree, the results are shocking. ”
The fictional study, utilising cutting edge imaginary tools that analyse the form, structure and original content of articles, including running the articles through anti-plagiarism software and word matrix generators, the UPONG survey, titled “The Industry With One Brain And Far Too Much Bandwidth”, unveiled shocking trends.
“Unbelievably”, Michael said, “the average originality of thought is so low as to be almost non-existent. The plagiarism algorithms that we ran the articles through showed a strong likelihood of plagiarism in close to 98% of all articles. At first, we put this down to syndication or perhaps a few DMCA violations, but this proved incorrect, as despite their similarity, all articles were original, in so far as being new piece’s of writing. It was just that there was just a complete and utter lack of virtually any original thought.”
What the UPONG also found was a strong correlation in teh use of specific words and types of words. “The patented UPONG Bullshit-o-meter™, a tool we pioneered to detect and out peddlers of BS, man, that tool was flashin’ its lil red light Hollywood B-grade movie access denied style all night long.” .
| Bullshit-o-meter™ Statistical Analysis |
| Term |
OF |
KWD |
| Specific Terms |
| Sandbox |
100.00% |
8.00% |
| Google |
100.00% |
6.00% |
| TrustRank |
83.63% |
4.00% |
| DMOZ |
67.43% |
1.00% |
| Aging delay |
47.63% |
0.76% |
| BS Indicator Terms |
| Proven |
99.76% |
2.65% |
| Unknown |
0.00% |
0.00% |
| Possibly / Possible |
0.00% |
0.00% |
| Absolute |
90.83% |
2.06% |
| comprehensive research |
12.89% |
2.06% |
| Commercial Indicator Terms |
| Free |
67.08% |
2.06% |
| eBook report |
18.49% |
1.86% |
The Bullshit-o-meter™ was going nuts because its statistical analysis of words known to be frequently utilised by scamsters, as well as common phrasings and exaggerated claims, encountered many irregularities.
“Looking at the data”, Michael continued, “you will see that several terms are overused, many others are hideously under-used, and some that should have been present simply were not used at all.”
Particularly surprising, according to UPONG’s press release, was the almost complete lack of doubt, or almost anything that was less than absolute certainty.
“No one used the word ‘possible’ / ‘possibly’. Amazing. A theory without the word ‘possible’ is like a fat man sans man boobs. Unheard of! Either the SEO community has no idea how to do research or present ideas, or they are so advanced in their reverse engineering that issues such as detailed research and doubt are simply superfluous. Whatever it is, that level of confidence has to be admired, if nothing else!”
This research has, however, lead to a several criticisms, including a stinging rebuttal from vocal UPONG critique and isos regular Michael Motherwell.
“It is like I said to myself when I hatched this idea”, chief UPONG critique Michael Motherwell commented. “Fictional research debunking crap articles that itself employs no research is a very poor basis for an article, even if it is supreme irony. And those tables, they are just sooooo bland and lack creativity and flair. They just scream Web 1.0!
“IMHO, to make this idea funny, the least UPONG needed to do was research, for two seconds, some complicated terms related to Information Retrieval (IR for those in the know). That would at least have given the gag some weight.
“That is not to say that the central theme isn’t still a good one. Not at all. The idea that all these sandbox theory articles are just snake oil sold by used car salesmen who flunked their bar exam is extremely valid, and this director’s cut proves that isos innovate in ways even I struggle to keep up with, straddling that fine line between pure genius and total insanity.
“It is just that the execution here is just far too lazy and sloppy, and the lack of cutting edge terms that mean nothing but are real is hardly made up for with a stupid radar graph.
“And this final self critique! My God that is such a lazy way to make sure people got the gag, especially when no-one seemed to struggle first time round.
“So, for all these reasons, I will have to judge this the single worst isos mock-u-post so far, providing yet more evidence, following those lame Jeeves songs, that isos has well and truly, without doubt, jumped the shark, and that the heady days of the Trapezoidal Linking Matriflx™ and Netherworld Suite are but a fading memory of a brief period in which isos was almost readable. ”
“Very, very poor work indeed.”
April 6th, 2006
In further proof of the mainstream growth of SEO, Santa, speaking via webcast from his new ADSL 2.0 connection in the Arctic, has revealed exclusively to isos some of the SEO requests little children of all those Mom & pop sites we hear so much about have sent to him.
“The little kiddies really are hilarious.”, Santa said. “Last year, they all wanted one number one ranking for a ‘Prime Keyword term’, but this year it seems that the message has got through, and the kiddies are asking for more specific terms, and more of them, better conversion rates and improved ROI.”
Santa, in an isos exclusive, has provided us with a sample of the letters he has received this year:
==========================================
Dear Santa
Please send Daddy 100 new anonymous proxies for Christmas.
Love- Amy “Black Hat” Ames
————————————————
Dear Amy,
Anonymous proxies are useful aren’t they? Uunbeknownst to many, Santa’s little elves have been busy laying fibre optic cable in the North Pole this year. The reindeer are quite upset, because flying with cable attached to the sleigh is hard work. Rudolf almost quit, and the reindeer union is in a bitter battle with the Telecommunication union and the Elvish Union over who has jurisdiction and it all got terribly messy. But never mind, cause now Santa can give all the little Black Hat boys and girls Mommy & Daddies all the anonymous proxies they could ever ask for.
PS: the full list will be in the card that comes with the Gift you really want. No peeking though, or it won’t be the Pony you really wanted.
==========================================
Dear Santa,
All I want for Christmas is my dad to get back his number one ranking for “miniature light rail models london” so that he can spend some time with us, instead of on the forums all day long obsessing.
Thanx,
Spike Spencer
PS, if I could have a pre-launch Playstation 3 with the optional Linux kit, keyboard and hard drive as well, that would be nice.
—————————
Dear Spike.
Ho Ho Ho, Merry Xmas. So daddy isn’t spending time with you eh? Santa isn’t sure that will actually be solved by a ranking, but it isn’t Santa’s job to judge, so consider it done.
Love,
Santa.
PS Those @%#$ @ Sony hate Santa, and won’t even let him have a pre-release Playstation 3. I am very upset, cause I think Cell is the chip of the future, especially now that floating point calculations are more important than integer operations.
Oh, and the elves! If I hear one more request for a Playstation 3 from those irritating little Hobbit wannabes I am going to scream. So sorry, but no can do on the Playstation3. How about an X-Box 360 instead?
==========================================
Dear Santa,
Please send Daddy 100 free links with the words “cheap tickets major events’ as the anchor text, all from PageRank 4 or higher pages with less than 12 outbounds on the page, without nofollow attributes, tracking or redirection and all on .edu or ,org sites. Daddy says that is the only way I can get a Puppy for my Birthday next year.
Love,
Simon Simonsen
———————–
Dear Simon,
Kid, Santa is good, but he ain’t that good. Will you settle for a link from Santa’s own home page, currently a PageRank of 8, as well as my 6 elve’s sites (mostly 4 and above) as well as Rudolph’s site, which is currently a 9 or ten, depending upon the datacenter?
All these sites are good, well trusted authorities, so Santa feels this is a really good deal, and much easier than conning a bunch of .edu sites into doing something they will take away in the New Year anyway.
I hope that is good enough!
PS, hope you get that puppy. Puppies are fun. Santa has had a few, but most are so freaked out by Rudolph’s red nose they run away and never come back. Santa was really sad the year Tiger ran away. He was a Shi Tzu, and Mrs Clause really loved him as well. Stupid Rudolph, I almost had him dog meated over that!
==========================================
Dear Santa,
I am appalled at your attitude to weight. I believe you are a heart attack waiting to happen, and a very poor role model for youth who already lead a slothful existence chained to a chair by a growing culture of computers and digital media. My debate team and I also feel that, as a fictional character, your offer of fleeting rankings, crappy corporate consumerism presents and false hope to Mom & Pop sites is an indictment on our the current state of denial griping our planet, and that you should be removed from our cultural lexicon and replaced with a more appropriate figure, such as Santa Ghandi.
What I and the Affirmative humbly ask for Xmas is for you to lose some weight, lose the beard, stop exploiting the “little people” you work with and for you to start championing causes that really matter, like Nuclear non-proliferation, getting the Kyoto protocol ratified and help stop the spread of globalisation and exploitation of the third world by rich, 1st world countries and ensuring that hate sites never again rank well on major Search Engines for terms like “jew” and “holocaust”.
Cordially,
Sarah ‘Concerned’ Smith.
———————–
Dear Sarah,
Ah, um…. Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas! That seems like a lot of work. How about a pony instead?
Love Santa
December 15th, 2005
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