Dan Savage isn’t a search engine optimization (SEO) expert by any means, in fact, it could be said that this unfortunate search result is proof that Google’s search algorithm works just fine.

Because Dan Savage’s site, SpreadingSantorum.com, provided Google with the three things that Google loves:

• Content – the splash page for SpreadingSantorum.com features just the definition that everybody is getting grossed out about and little more.
• Search Friendly Site Architecture – Basically, this means the site is well built and doesn’t use any weird tricks, etc.
• Inbound Links – Once Dan Savage wrote about this new site, people started linking to it, then when people found out about it, even more people started linking to it, and now everybody is linking to it… and Google really loves that.

Getting to the top of the search results for “santorum” was a snap.

Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Rick Santorum‘s web team sucks as their job.  I mean, the dude is actually Rick Santorum, and Santorum isn’t really that common of a name, so he should be near the top by accident most of the time.  I mean, I have to share my full name with a bunch of people, plus, outside of my professional career, nobody really knows who I am, which is why I come in second to a crazy, radio preacher when you search for my name.  However, Rick… you’re in the public eye here! All you need to do is the basics and you can ditch the gross definition in no time.

Frankly, I’m not sure why I’m actually trying to help here… I mean, the guy is a homophobic jackass and even if I was on that side of the political fence, I still wouldn’t root for this guy.  However, I do hate hearing the press and a bunch of other nut jobs claim that this is all part of some left wing conspiracy to hold this guy down.

It isn’t, and here’s why: He actually did everything that is causing this bad search result to happen in the first place.

When my kids screw up and get pissed at me or cry or whatever, I always remind that that they’re not being picked on here… they actually screwed up.  You can’t hit your brother, say something gross in front of your sister, or skip your homework and then be angry when I send you to your room.  In this case, you can’t call gay people animals without getting some heat from the free press.

So, what’s this poor asshole to do? Give people something else to talk about. Change the conversation. Fight fire, with fire. I mean, it’s too much to ask for him to stop being an asshole, so let’s not get crazy, but at the very least, play the game when it comes to search engine marketing, social media, and so forth.

For starters, get some damn content on your site.  Right now, if you go to the official Rick Santorum site, you end up with a big ass donation page that is mostly made up of an image of your mug, crowing about how close you came to winning in Iowa.  There’s no content here at all… no description of your platform, no mention of your economic policy, no nothing.

Second, sort your damn site architecture out… that’s the stuff that makes up a web page (HTML, etc.).  Right away, you can see that your site’s title (generated with what is called a TITLE tag) reads “Iowa Was Just The Beginning | Rick Santorum for President”, which is only helpful if people are searching for “Iowa was just the beginning.”  You’re lucky you included your name in there, which helps a little, but not as much as you were hoping.  On top of that, you’ve got a big image and a donation form as the majority of your page, which is bad because it doesn’t give Google much to latch on to when it crawls your site to figure out where to rank you in their index.

Third, get yourself some more inbound links for your own name.  This is only part of the equation, mind you, so you still need to do the rest, but right now, one thing I can see is that more people are linking to SpreadingSantorum.com with your name than people are linking to your own site with your name.  While you have more inbound links than the other site in total, clearly a lot of them are for other things (that I can’t see, by the way, so I’m not sure what they are at all).

Basically, you want people to stop seeing a dirty word when they search for your name, get your shit together (pardon the pun) and fix it yourself.  Don’t run to Google and ask for them to fix it… Google isn’t the broken one here, your site is effed up.  I would say stop being an asshole, but I doubt you’re going to do that… so, at least don’t suck at SEO.

Related articles

• Dear Rick Santorum: 6 Ways to Fix Your Google Problem (mashable.com)
• Rick Santorum’s Search Engine Problem Hits The Big Time (paidcontent.org)
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse (searchengineland.com)

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To say that Aaron Wall of SEO Book has a personal vendetta against the behemoth search engine company, Google, is an understatement. Over the years, he has blogged and spoken with the passion of a man that is trying to get children out of coalmines about how Google doesn’t follow its own rules, favors big corporations, and is just basically not following its own mantra of, “Do no harm.”

So, when Aaron discovered a bunch of paid links for Google’s browser, Chrome, with the ad copy of ”This post is sponsored by Google” on more than 400 pages, he must have thought he had found the golden fleece.  Aaron blogged about it, so Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land and a bunch of other search news sites picked it up as news.

However, just like a bunch of stories from last year, they didn’t have all the facts just yet.  Turns out, Essence Digital, the company that actually placed the paid links, had this to say to the BBC:

Google told the BBC that it had never commissioned Essence Digital to approach bloggers and place sponsored links.

In its own statement, Essence Digital said: “Google never approved a sponsored-post campaign. They only agreed to buy online video ads. Google have consistently avoided paid postings to promote their products, because in their view these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users.

“We apologise to Google who clearly didn’t authorise this.”

I don’t blame Danny Sullivan or Search Engine Land for the story and I can’t be too angry about the SEO Book posting for this kind of thing; both publications did actually catch Google doing something that they shouldn’t have been doing, and it’s pretty damn juicy to catch somebody doing something that they tell other people not to do (hell, it’s a stalwart of any political reporting these days) .

I think where I get a bit perturbed is how quickly everybody went to press without a statement from Google.

Back in the old days of the press, if you didn’t have a source in place for something like this,  you didn’t run the story.  I’m pretty sure everybody has seen “All The President’s Men” at this point in your life if you’re going to get into the writing game, but clearly some of the finer points are lost on the bloggers of the world.

When it turns out that Google never authorized the purchase of paid links (which if you use your head, why would they want or need to in the first place?), the first thing out of all the search engine blogs should be, “we’re sorry for blaming you directly,” but I doubt that will ever happen.

Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not naive, I know that big corporations do a lot of evil in this world.  In fact, I’m usually the first one to say it because people usually love to blame the government or some other organization for a lot of the bad stuff that goes down in America.  However, let’s try and not just blame Google for all the evil in the search engine marketing game. This was sloppy work on both Google and Essence’s part, but why does everybody always have to go for the evil conclusion?

Sure, they’re a big company now, but despite what you may think, they are not run by robots or super humans. Google is made up of good old fashioned regular humans, who eff things up on a regular basis.  In this case, Google outsourced some work to another company of humans, who clearly have even lower standards for workmanship, and are most likely done as a company now because they just screwed up with the wrong client.

I know it won’t happen, but the bloggers and online news organizations of the world need to learn to take a breath before jumping on stuff like this.  Just like when it turned out that CarrierIQ wasn’t really keystroke tracking your every move, Google wasn’t really buying links… a company it hired was.

I know it’s a subtle detail and it’s not as much fun to report on, but trust me, I’m sure Google is doing plenty of other evil stuff you can call them on this year, so pace  yourself.

Related articles

• Google Caught Buying Paid Links Again (seroundtable.com)
• Uh oh, Google may be in trouble for fishy Chrome sponsored post campaign (venturebeat.com)
• OOPS! GOOGLE runs afoul of own rules on searches… (guardian.co.uk)
• Google Violated Its Own Evil-Free Policies While Promoting Chrome (gizmodo.com.au)

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2. (NOT) The Google Super Bowl ad #sb44
3. Microsoft has some (wholly inaccurate) fun with “GMail Man”

This year, we here at Dead Tree Media saw so much carnage on the tech front, that we decided to write our first ever “yearend list” that highlights not only the biggest controversies, but those that actually turned out to be nothing once the facts came to the surface (yet, are still constantly used in jokes on Nerve… sorry Netflix).

#5. The Apple iPhone 5… Sorry, 4S

The folks over at Mashable and TechCrunch love a good Apple rumor. Even if they have absolutely no factual backup, they will let fly a collection of Apple myths and pose it as a full-fledged, fact-checked story that came right from the cold, dead lips of Steve Jobs himself. This year, it was all about the launch of the latest incarnation of the iPhone, which turned out to be called the iPhone 4S, much to the chagrin of those that swore it was going to be the iPhone 5.

The only problem… nobody actually knew what the difference between and iPhone 4S and an iPhone 5 would actually be in the first place.

You see, all the Apple lovers out there (admission, I actually own an iPhone 4S) had been carefully watching all the rumors about the feature set of the next iPhone, wondering which features would make the cut and which would not, and all the while, calling it an iPhone 5, because, well hell, it was up to them to name another company’s product. Then, like a kid that gets dumped just before the prom, Apple decides that the feature set included in this update isn’t worthy of a full incremental update and ended up calling it the iPhone 4S, with the S standing for “speed” just like last time they did this with the iPhone 3GS.

The crazy thing… some people actually decided that they weren’t going to get the latest model because it wasn’t an iPhone 5. Wait… what? These idiots didn’t even know what an iPhone 5 is, yet they swore that this piece of vapor hardware is bound to be better than the model that actually exists. Ben Parr of Mashable and a bunch of other reporters actually said out loud during the press conference, “Wow, I was hoping it was the iPhone 5,” after the name was announced… before the list of features was even revealed.

I know you guys are all about the next big shiny thing, but could you at least wait for it to exist? No wonder the people over at Samsung made fun of you in their commercials.

#4. iPhone’s Siri is Pro-Life

Some tech controversies are so hot that they actually creep over into the non-tech world and get picked up by the regular media. Such was the case when it was discovered that if you tell the virtual assistant built into the iPhone 4S, Siri, that you want to get an abortion in the New York area, she suddenly can’t find any abortion clinics near your location. Not only did the media lose their shit over this one, but the ultra-religious, pro-life groups claimed it as a victory, and the pro-choice groups claimed that it was right wing plot.

The only problem: Siri’s a fucking computer program, and computer programs are only as smart as the people who create them. While Siri can do some amazing stuff (seriously, it’s a mind bending piece of technology… after I picked up my iPhone 4S, I lost a week of my life talking to her, so much so, my wife thought I was having an affair), it can’t go beyond its programming. So, when you ask her for an abortion, and there are no businesses that actually use the word “abortion” in their name, she won’t make the leap and show you abortion clinics. However, if you asked her for a Planned Parenthood location, she can whip up a list in seconds flat.

The real nutty thing here… everybody should have figured this out a lot faster than they actually did. Some of the best minds in the search engine marketing business wrote articles explaining the issue to people, yet the idiots over at Fox News and even some of the smarter members of the press, kept getting it wrong, over and over again.

Folks, they are just machines… they can’t be pro or con anything, they can’t be racist, they can’t love or hate or anything else that we do. So, the next time you think your phone is out to get you, do me a favor and just turn it back in to the store, you’re clearly not intelligent enough to own such a sophisticated piece of technology.

#3. Carrier IQ is Tracking Your Every Move

Back in November of 2011, an Android developer named Trevor Eckhart, released a video on YouTube and a blog posting on his site that claimed that he had been tinkering around inside of his phone’s software and discovered that a piece of software by a company called Carrier IQ actually logs keystrokes and tracks users’ locations. Once both the tech and regular news media got a hold of this, they lost their fucking minds like they had just discovered that someone had put a chip in their head… all without asking either the mobile carriers or Carrier IQ if it was actually true.

To make matters even worse, the mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and Carrier IQ said next to nothing after the story broke and ended up looking like they had actually been caught doing something. Eventually, when sites like Mashable wouldn’t shut up about it, they started to come forward to finally clear the whole mess up. Some of them plainly said that, no that’s not what that software does; while they do use it to improve the quality of their service, they aren’t tracking your keystrokes or location. A few came out and flat out denied that they used Carrier IQ at all, while others, went a bit extreme and said that they would stop using Carrier IQ immediately. Poor Carrier IQ came out and made it as clear as possible, over and over again, that they weren’t up to anything, but people still kept losing their shit like, to the point where Congress was asking for them to drop by for a chat.

Here’s the thing folks… tech companies like Carrier IQ or any other company that collects data on usage habits, purchasing habits, or whatever, doesn’t give a rats ass about you. In fact, they don’t even know who you are. And that’s on purpose, because of crazy shit like these trumped up charges against them. The usage patterns of one user are worthless; however, when you put them all together in one big pile, they are a goldmine of information that allows engineers and other analytics geeks to figure out how to improve things beyond your wildest dreams. Before they could do this, they would just base your satisfaction on surveys that only the feeble minded had time to answer, so the shit that was really bugging the paying customers, would never get solved. Now things get fixed so fast, people actually complain about how often their software updates instead of thanking the developers for handling bugs so rapidly.

Sorry people, Carrier IQ and all the other tech companies don’t know who you are and they prefer it that way.

#2. Netflix Raises Its Prices and Tries to Start a New Company, Quickster

I have to tell you right up front, I friggin’ love Netflix. Even back when it was all about DVDs, I thought the idea was the best thing since sliced bread. As someone who never had time to hang out in the video store on a Friday night, I loved the fact that freshly baked DVDs would arrive in my mailbox each week. Then, when they introduced streaming over the computer or Xbox or PS3 or a crapload of other devices, I about lost my mind. This was science fiction come to life… the ability to watch movies instantly over a dozen different devices was the stuff of legend and frankly, the world should all bow down and kiss Netflix’s bright red ass for figuring out how to do this.

One of the most amazing things about the streaming service was that it was included with your regular DVD subscription service, which was nice. Occasionally, when you were in the gap between the physical discs arriving at your door, you could go back and catch up on some old TV or some of the less popular titles. However, over the summer of 2011, now that everybody was comfortable with using streaming and completely addicted to its charms, Netflix decided to actually start charging people for something it had been giving away for free.

Let’s look at that again… Netflix, a company who is in the business of making money, had been giving their customers something for free, and then started charging for it when they decided the time was right. Notice I didn’t say they raised their prices, because they didn’t. Streaming video actually costs Netflix a lot of money to provide to its customers… a lot, a lot. If you somehow thought that they were getting the use of servers, internet lines, engineers, and a boat load of other things necessary to make streaming work for free, then I’ll just say it… you’re a fucking moron.

Netflix deciding to charge for something that they were losing money on isn’t a crime… it’s just a good business decision. I know, we all love to get shit for free, but if everybody did that, then we wouldn’t have anything left. Plus, it’s not like they forced you to take shit you didn’t want. If you wanted to just use the streaming service, you could do that. If you just wanted to do DVDs, you could do that, too. If you wanted both, then you were going to have to pay for both. Crazy, I know.

To confuse things further, Netflix decided to split off its physical DVD business into another company, called Quickster. It was a fairly simply concept really, Netflix was for streaming movies, and Quickster was for old school DVDs. While I never saw an article putting it this way, to me, this tacftic seemed like a way for the company to start the process of phasing out its DVD business, which was still making them money, but was more expensive and less profitable than the streaming business, plus, DVDs are bound to die out soon enough anyway (Blu-Rays are the last gasp of a dying industry, trust me). Think about it, Quickster could deal with all of the customers who still wanted DVDs, and when the time came for DVDs to go away, they could just shut the company down, while Netflix, which is now just doing streaming, was still running strong.

Did Netflix actually raise prices for its service? Nope. But, that didn’t matter, because every blog known to man took the idea of the change in pricing and ran with it, making Netflix look like a bunch of evil, money grubbing assholes. Then, with the launch of Quickster, people just thought that the people running the show had lost their minds. As you can imagine, I really felt bad for Netflix because in reality, the only thing they did wrong here was not handle their public relations properly.

Both the press and users claimed that Netflix wasn’t being transparent (which, by the way, they don’t have to be… it’s their company, if they want to make changes, they can) and were demanding the head of the CEO on a platter. In the wake of all the craziness, over 800,000 users left the service; however, if you think about it, these were probably people that were just upset that they were getting charged for something they once got for free, not the truly hardcore customers that loved the service no matter what. As a bonus, near the end of the year, some of the consumer satisfaction surveys came out stating that Netflix had lost some of its customer love, even though nothing about the service had actually changed.

People, get over yourselves; Netflix is in the business to make money and if you don’t want to pay for the service, then you don’t get to keep using the service. It’s just that simple. No great crime has been cast upon you; you’re just a pack of cheap bastards.

#1. Google is Out to Get Me and a Shitload of Other Crimes

Here on the cusp of 2012, you should know that Google is now a full-fledged, behemoth of a company. The goody two shoes, “Do No Harm” company that was born in a computer science lab has grown up into a good, old fashioned American company that employs thousands of people and makes billions of dollars. And, despite what you think, they are far from perfect… they fuck up like any other company out there and, you know what, we all need to stop taking it so personally.

Google was busy in 2011. They released a ton of new features, made a bunch of updates to their search algorithms, rolled out countless new products, bought dozens of startups, and pissed off a ton of people, all while smiling on their way to the bank. Some might think the pissing people off thing should make them feel bad or that someone should do something about that, but the thing is, they really don’t effing care anymore.

And frankly, I don’t blame them. Why, because they’re not in this business to make friends, they’re here to make money… a lot of money. If you don’t like the way Google does business, then please, go use some other product and shut the fuck up about it all… trust me, they won’t miss you in the slightest. For every one of you upright, controversy starved, raving lunatics that things that Google is out to take over the world, there are ten new users from kids in a classroom to your great aunt Matilda who used Google to find something today.

Plus, let’s just say it… you folks that think Google is out to rule the world, or that it favors the rich or big business, or that it’s out to sell your identity to the highest bidder, or whatever street corner lunatic theory you can come up with this week, you all are fucking crazy. Google has become so big, it has the same PR problems of the government; it’s never just the somebody screwed up, it’s that something evil is afoot and we should all fear for our lives.

My theory about life is this: there are two reasons why bad things happen to good people; either it’s because of something evil, or because of something stupid, and 99% of the time, it’s because of something stupid. Are there, in fact, evil corporations running around or even evil workers inside of what is a mostly good company? Absolutely. But, you simply can’t just think that everything Google rolls out each week is part of some Dr. Evil style plot to empty Fort Knox.

Google, in its attempt to continue to grow its business is going to continue to try new things, to update their software, to start or retire their products, and sometimes those things are going to work, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes Google makes some really fantastic decisions that nobody ever sees and sometimes it changing things just enough for a pack of nut jobs to think that they are out to steal your grandmother’s pearls. But folks, we need to get together here and realize that, when Google fucks up, it isn’t because they are evil, but because, they are a collection of humans doing things together and, as we should all know, humans fuck up all the time.

Get over it… it’s just a search engine, not the second coming.

Happy New Year.

Jeff

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Just in case you don’t get the joke, here’s the one that Google actually ran during the big game, which was actually released late last year online, but worked so well they decided to use it on Sunday:

Reviews are coming soon, but just know, I hated the damn Denny’s ads…

J.

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Here was the ad that introduced most humans to this new technical wonder:

So, I get it, the ad is making fun of the Mac’s style of ads with their little black text on a white background and the cutesy music that you claim you hate, but you end up buying anyway because the damn thing gets stuck in your head.  Plus, you have the bonus of an iPhone/iPod/iEverything joke from the late nineties in the form of every sentence start with “iDon’t”.

Yup, that’s some pretty clever stuff there, gang. I can tell you put a lot of thought in that over there. Way to stick it to the establishment, brother.

Here’s the problem though, all the stuff you call out as a problem, isn’t really much of a problem to the common folks.  That is, what you just presented to a lot of people was a really weak argument for switching from the iPhone to the Droid.

Let’s take a look at them, shall we?

- I don’t have a real keyboard

Yeah, that was kind of the point though, right?  I mean, the iPhone was designed not to have a keyboard so you wouldn’t run into all the problems caused by having a bunch of little moving parts on something that lives in your pocket most of the time.  I know some people are into the whole tactile, button pushing thing, but so was I before I got my iPhone and I adapted pretty quick.

- I don’t run simultaneous apps

This one is just kinda geeky and maybe even a little incorrect.  I mean, I know what you’re trying to say, the iPhone really only runs one thing at a time for the most part, but how often is that really an issue?  It is a damn phone after all and most of the time I’m happy that I can keep my music playing in the background while I’m looking at a map.  If you really need something that runs a bunch of simultaneous applications, then maybe kick back over to a laptop, that’s what they’re for in the first place.

- I don’t take 5 megapixel pictures

Yeah, that’s because the iPhone really isn’t a camera.  I know, I know, they all have little cameras in them these days, but still, it’s a friggin’ phone… the camera is just kind of a nice to have.  If I want really good pictures, I use an actual camera.

- I don’t customize

This sounded like a big deal until I remembered I wasn’t a 12 year old girl and could give a shit about customizing my phone.  You want to make your phone look pretty? Get a nice case, d-bag.

- I don’t run widgets

Yeah, and I hardly miss them either.  I remember when they started the whole widget thing on Windows and it was the first thing I turned off.  Annoying little wastes of space.

- I don’t allow open development

Again, a little geeky fellas.  First of all, who gives a shit? The iPhone has like a bajillion apps these days and while Apple is a little deutschland deutschland with its approval cycle, it stills let a crapload of great apps onto the market on a regular basis.

- I don’t take pictures in the dark

Again, that’s because it’s not really a camera.  You want pictures in the dark, go get a camera. Most of the time people are just making that goofy fish lip face at an arm’s length anyway, so the need for high-resolution, properly lit camera work is a little over played.

- I don’t have interchangeable batteries

You know, when I was considering my iPhone, this was actually one of the things that bothered me about their setup, the fact that you can’t replace the batteries.  Then I remembered, over the years, with the many, many phones I’ve owned, I can only remember once when I actually needed a spare battery and by the time I actually needed to replace a battery that wasn’t charging like it used to, it was time to ditch the phone anyway.

* * *

My point in all of this is, who the hell is this ad for?  The easy answer is “early adopters”, that geeky subset of users that just buy anything new and shiny before they work all the bugs out just because it is, new and shiny.  But then I thought about it a little more; if this is aimed at early adopters, what’s with the media buy?

I used this particular version of the Droid ad because it bleeds into a baseball game.  The first time I actually saw this ad, I was watching a Sunday night football game.  So, maybe you’ll catch some of the early adopters during sports, but probably not a lot of that version of the early adopter even know what “open source development” is in the first place. That set is over watching that hot chick on G4 talk about video games.

Also, they bought a TON of media time for this campaign. Not just for this spot, but for all of the spots in the campaign, plus a boat load of radio, outdoor, and a bunch of shit I probably haven’t even seen.  I haven’t bought traditional media in awhile, but last time I looked, the early adopter set was a pretty small market and you’re casting a net like you’re selling a new burger at McDonald’s.

I don’t have the media plan in front of me, but I get the feeling that what we’re looking at is two very big companies with two very big budgets that really needed to swing their corporate junk around to get people’s attention off the iPhone for awhile.

Well, good friggin’ luck with that, guys.  The one thing you forget to do to make the Droid a direct competitor to the iPhone is make it cute.  Ugh, yeah, I know… I hated even writing that. But that’s what it’s going to come down to in the end. You can make your little wonder of a phone do all the same shit the iPhone does and more, but until you can convince a regular, good old fashioned, thong-wearin’ chick to buy one of them, you’re only going to sell the things to the geek set.  While there may be a lot of geeks running the show these days (trust me, I’m a member of the Blade Runner fan club, here), there are a bunch more chicks that love their phones.

Just sayin’, maybe next time spend a little less time measuring up to the other boys and more time learning how to impress your date.

J.

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