Google have announced the launch of a government censorship tool that shows requests made by the world governments to remove websites and content. The tool also shows any freedom of information requests made for personal user data.

Google made the announcement while delivering a poignant message to the governments of the world – that freedom of opinion and expression are not liberties to be trifled with. Quoting article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Google warns of the alarming growth of censorship on the Web:

…”‘everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today’s Internet — one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.”

Here at the Manchester SEO blog, we are delighted at the move, and wanted to take this opportunity to openly thank Google for their protective gaze. Recent revelations over our MPs expenses have demonstrated just how unfit our leaders are to police themselves. At the very least, this tool will prove a highly effective safeguard against further abuses of power. With the controversial passing of the UK’s Digital Economy Bill, the timing couldn’t have been better.

The Manchester SEO Blog is currently running a series of anti-censorship tutorials explaining how proxies and Google’s DNS might be used to get around web censorship.

Above all, this message reminds us that intellect will always triumph over tyranny. I would not trust our government to decide what search results I see. But if Google stood for parliament, I would vote for them.

In this second exciting instalment in the Digital Economy Bill series, The Manchester SEO Blog Just Roger IT! will demonstrate how you can reconfigure your computer to make use of Google’s own DNS system. I will also explain why this might provide another valuable tool to add to your Swiss Army Knife of tactics that will subvert any level of control the UK government might attempt to impose upon the Internet itself.

What is DNS (Domain Name System)?

Basically, DNS is a giant Internet phonebook – every time you access a website using a domain name, your computer resolves that name into the IP address of the machine that will serve out your desired website. For example, this website www.manchester-seo-blog.co.uk is hosted on the machine with the IP address 82.165.217.36. Although the reality is more complex, this is essentially why DNS is an important part of being able to access a website.

Google’s DNS and Blockages

DNS may become important if our government tries to block ‘undersirable’ websites that may have found their way on to Santa’s naughty list. One possible block the government may attempt to use, would be to do something to the DNS itself. While the machine itself may be reachable from yours, the website will become – in effect – ex-directory and you will therefore not be able to connect to the website through the domain.

A few months ago, Google began offering a free and fast DNS service, and with some minor reconfiguration of your computer, you can use Google’s DNS instead of your ISP’s own. Because Google operate this service from the United States, the UK government will be unable to stop your machine using this service.

How To Configure Your System

Configuring Google’s DNS for Windows XP

To add Google’s DNS servers to your Internet configuration, simply follow these steps:

• Click Start, then Control Panel and from here double click Network Connections
• Right click on the network connection you use and click Properties.
• From this dialog box, highlight the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option and cilck Properties

Right click on the network connection you use and click Properties.

• Next, simply click the radio button: ‘Use the following DNS server addresses:‘ and enter Google’s DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

Configuring Google’s DNS for Windows 7

• Click Start, then Control Panel and from here click Network and Internet
• From this control panel, click Network Center and then click the Personalize link.
• From this dialog box, highlight the Internet connection your computer uses, then cilck the Properties button.

Right click on the network connection you use and click Properties.

• Click the Properties button in this next dialog box (you may need to provide admin password at this point)
• Highlight the TCP/IP Version 4 option and click ‘Properties‘ and in the next dialog box, click: ‘Use the following DNS addresses‘ and enter 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4..

Okay, by now you should be all done! Click OK and apply all of those settings. Google’s DNS System is so awesome that you may well improve the speed and responsiveness of your Internet as a by-product. The important thing is that nobody within the UK would be able to stop you, and should the government attempt to block domains using some DNS tricks, this would provide a neat way around it!

Six months ago, I blocked Russia and China from all my personal web servers. My friends said this was a bad idea – not only for search engine optimistion (SEO) purposes, but also claimed I had managed to create a ‘racist server’! I was not proud of this decision, which was made after careful observation that the majority of all hack attacks, brute force ftp attacks, spoofs and intrusion attempts came from Chinese machines and IP addresses. Taking this action has cut my monitoring and maintenance times to less than a tenth of what they were and relieved much of the strain on my computers.

Due to the scale of these operations, I had become certain that this was more than a band of geeks doing their thing. Such elaborate hacks with seemingly limitless resources suggested someone was systematically providing them these resources, intelligence and a safe haven for their activities without fear of prosecution.

Google Hack Targeted Human Rights Activists

Until now, these have been paranoid thoughts I have been kept locked away in my own mind. But today, this all changed when Google announced a recent ’sophisticated’ GMail attack on their servers from China. They claim to have uncovered evidence that the goal of the attack was to access the private GMail accounts of Chinese human rights activists which have long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. This suggests that my worst suspicions may not be far from the truth, raising broader questions about free speech which Google cover in today’s announcement.

The purpose of the Internet that Tim Berners-Lee envisaged was – of course – about bringing people together. But people invariably bring ideas with them, and many of these ideas do not agree. Geographical distance provided a convenient partition space for these ideas to co-exist, but these partitions dissapear on the Internet.

A Pivotal Moment for the Internet

I believe this recent clash between Google and China will mark a pivotal moment for the Internet itself. From a political standpoint, we will see the cooling of already chilly relationships to all-new sub-zero temperatures. Google’s next move will leave a lasting imprint on the history of the Internet itself. In today’s official post, Google reminded China that they were not happy censoring results in the country – a move designed to appease the Chinese government some time ago. They went on to say they will revisit this decision, and the broader idea of all their operations in China:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China

Google’s message could not be clearer – they are considering withdrawing from China altogether. I hope this is not the case, as this is not allowing the humans to resolve their differences, but avoiding the question altogether. Any webmasters who are interested in being able to block an entire country such as China should visit Okean.com, which gives the .htaccess rules for Apache. This will obviously not protect your other services though! I will certainly be watching Google’s next move with baited breath.

A Review By The Manchester SEO Blog

Well, Christmas has come and gone and already I find myself imagining what 2010 has in store for us! Tomorrow I will be cashing in some more of my predictions from last year, and also making some fresh ones for 2010. Today, however, I wanted to write an update of a prediction made six months ago when I reported the launch of the new Your First Search business directory. At the time I described it as a “business connection tool that would rise above other directories and offer a genuine alternative for business related searches”.

Over the last six months, I have watched in awe as this directory has soared in popularity to obtain a Google Page Rank of 5, boasting almost 350,000 pages (according to Google) and ranking very well for a range of search terms.

Optimising Your Business Directory Link Building

I often talk about the importance of link building, and despite the recent overhaul of Google, link building still forms the essential core of all SEO activities. However, the art of effective link building depends on you being able to identify the directories that will benefit your website the most. For every popular business directory there will be a hundred unpopular tumble-weed baiting ones that a person might waste time submitting their site to. In this respect YFS is definitely a feather to keep under your cap that will give significant clout to your SEO and website’s rank.

Why Is YFS Better Than Most Other Business Directories?

There are actually several answers to this. The first is that the authors themselves are Search Engine Consultants. These wizards know exactly how to craft every architectural detail of the directory to ensure it can be easily indexed by search engines, maximising the benefit of each business listing and outbound link. Despite the history that yell.com, Thomson Local and other well established directories may have, none have such a rich background in search, and will therefore be left playing catch-up in this area of expertise.

Each entry in YFS is carefully hand edited to ensure consistency, quality of data and usability. Most other directories rely on site owners to choose a category they feel is most appropriate with only minimal moderation – usually a simple approve / disapprove choice by moderators – leading to all kinds of interestingly disorganised inconsistencies.

Unlike many other directories, YFS also allows each entry to include a brief company description along with contact details and a map, allowing companies more freedom on how their listing appears, and also providing a great deal of quality information to users.

Conclusion

At the time of writing, YFS has grown to become one of the more popular business directories on the web. There are quite a number of others of equal popularity around, but this is definitely one I would recommend being featured in. However, it is the speed at which this site has grown that has been truly astonishing and perhaps a telling indication that it has not yet reached the apex of it’s popularity.

Google has been gradually rolling out some exciting new features over the last few months: from real time search and social search to music and image-driven searches. They even gave Google a face lift with some nice fading text on the homepage and a tweak under the hood with the Google Caffeine update.

But the real biggie for the SEO world is Google’s personalised search results. For the first time ever in search engine history, everyone will be given slightly different search results.  This is true even if you are not logged in to your Google account.  This week the Internet was bombarded with a flurry of posts by mourners proclaiming that SEO was officially dead. I was particularly worried that my results might start to lack variety, or that I would only get to read news that Google thought would please my interests and political palette. Variety is the spice of life, because without the bland, spice loses all meaning. Just what will these updates mean for SEO? I am pleased to announce that SEO very much alive and well, and that – today - The Manchester SEO Blog can reveal the reality of tomorrows SEO and what these recent updates will mean for you.

A Poorly Expressed Search Will Be Affected More

Imagine opening your phone and searching for ‘John’ in your contacts. I have Johns in my phone too… But mine are not likely to be the same as yours, and yet they are all John. I have been vague and expressed this search rather poorly, knowing that only a handful of Johns feature in my life on a regular basis.

Now imagine searching for ‘plumbers’ in Google. This is also a poorly expressed search because most plumbers only operate in a relatively local area. Now imagine that Google has built up a history of my searches, and knows that services in MANCHESTER are the ones I will be interested in… Google can supplement the missing information in my search to give a bias to Manchester based plumbers. If however, I search for ‘plumbers in Manchester’ I am likely to see similar results, even if I lived in Sheffield, even if I was a totally different person with a different search history.

Not All Searches Will Be Affected Equally

Each search results pages will be affected differently, and some will be affected more than others. If your website was optimised well, you will already be ranking well for some good long tail phrases and local searches anyway, so we can expect to see little or no change with 8 out of 10 search results pages.  Of these, most will be an adjustment by only one or two places, not the complete overhaul which has led to this spate of SEO doomsday proclaimers!  After all, a great website with plenty of traffic and a horde of good back links is still a great site.  To suggest that the old methods are now totally ineffective is akin to standing in Manchester centre with a sandwich board that reads: “The End is Neigh!”.

The reality is more likely to be a very slight skew in some searches and a change of one or two places in other cases.  For the most part, it is these general and ambiguous search terms that will see the biggest shift.  Mostly Google will draw on your search history to fill in any blanks on your current search. Anyone who feels SEO is dead, should go ahead and leave the industry. It will mean a bigger slice of the pie for the rest of us!

One question I get asked quite often, usually comes in the form of the statement : “I’ve found company X offering to do Y-thousand back links over Z weeks for some fixed amount of money” (adjust variables as necessary!).  You might think such information helps you assess the value of such a service, but it does not.  Today I will be asking : just how effective are link buying tactics?  What are the potential risks?  And how do these compare with links won for good quality content?

Well, it really depends on who is acquiring the links for you. Unless you know for sure how and where they plan to obtain these links, there is always a degree of risk to your site and domain.

What Are The Risks of Link Buying?

Google is very smart, and is aware of these tactics.  In the worst case scenario, your link building company has no ethics and will use link farming and spam techniques to obtain the sheer volume of links for you. If Google notices this sudden influx of poor quality links, your domain name may be penalised, impairing it’s ability to rank – or worse – may actually be blacklisted altogether.

How Can I Judge The Quality of Paid Back Links?

When I used to work for Tescos, one of their slogans was: ‘would you buy it?’ – do you feel the standard of service and presentation of the product meets your own personal standards? I like to think the same is true of the Web : ‘would you click it?’. If these links come from a site which someone may find helpful, and the links contribute to the usefulness and structure of the Web, then you have nothing to worry about.  If however, the referring sites include nonsensical gibberish, repetition of keywords and features links that appear to be going around in circles, then be afraid! Be very, very afraid!

The page rank of the referring page is also another important indicator. Google will not assign a page rank at all if it suspects foul play is afoot. If the referring page has a Google page rank other than zero, you are probably quite safe. This is why I often advise people to go for a smaller number of higher PR links, rather than sheer volume alone. There is significantly less risk, and potentially more for you to gain!

Advantages of Buying Links vs. Quality Content Linkbaiting

Recent updates to Google’s algorithm, mean that more weighting is given to relevance and quality of content that surrounds the link. I believe this is one fundamental cornerstone that has ushered in the current era of SEO blogging. If the link is surrounded by well written, rich and informative text content, you will find the link does several times more for you than a series of generic business directory listings. Not only this – but the traffic it conducts is likely to stay longer, be more interested in the topics you discuss and will improve the overall health of our SEO itself.

The (Current) Verdict?

In a perfect world, I think Google would like everyone to keep their links very context-relevant, and would like to encourage all users to freely contribute as much information as they possibly can to the Web. But in reality, not everyone has time to get very involved in generating rich content – particularly if you have a business to run! Be sure you have an idea what type of links your link broker will build.  Go for quality not quantity - 5 good back links will do more for you than 50 generic ones, do not be swayed by sheer volume alone!  And – as always – be very cautious.

A few days ago Google announced the launched of Chromium OS, and like an excited kid on Christmas Eve, I just couldn’t wait! Yesterday, the firstly publicly available developer build of the operating system was released. If – like me – you already have several other operating system installed (but use Windows as your primary system), you will probably find that running VM Ware Server from within Windows will make your life a little easier.

Installing Chromium OS on VMWare Virtual Machine and Player

You can download the VMWare virtual images for this operating system from gdgt (you will need to create yourself a login, but this only takes a few seconds!).  Alternatively you could download the torrent.  Next download the VMWare Server here. You can install this on Windows, enabling you to run your virtual machines from your Windows desktop.  Alternatively you can use VMWare Player which I find is a lot faster, however GDGT did not supply this virtual drive with a VMX configuration file,
so I generated one using EasyVMX (I chose ‘other’ operating system).  EasyVMX will give you a zip file, which you just need to unpack into one of your Virtual Machine Folders.

Then, simply open up the folder you extracted the VMX files to, and rename the VMDK file to the same file name as the other files (they should share a similar base name, although they will have different extensions), then Then turn your virtual machine ON!

Google Chromium OS Review – The Verdict

What can I say? Google Chromium OS is the only operating system that looks and feels exactly like a giant version of the Google Chrome browser.  It seems to evolve around the Web, using your Google account login to access the system, running all applications through an instance of the browser. It is incredibly fast, and even in VM Player, you have a responsive system only seconds after pushing the on switch.

The trade off appears to be having less functionality.  Google Chromium OS does not carry all the clutter of utility programs and drivers in the background, making it fast.  But I have no obvious file explorer, or terminal console available for running commands.  At first I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. On the plus side, Chromium appears to be skinnable, and users of Linux’s X Windows will be pleased to note it is distributed with the GTK+ Appearance theme.  I immediately turned this on to give me some feeling of normality.

The concept of having an OS running entirely on the Internet clearly belongs to the new generation of thought.  Google have made this OS open source, and have welcomed contributions from developers.  While yesterdays developer launch may provide little more than a bare framework, I would like to reserve judgement until after the masses have contributed.

This morning, the Manchester SEO Blog was moved to it’s new home at manchester-seo-blog.co.uk, but please remain calm, any links or bookmarks you had will continue to work (if you want to know how to do this click here!).  I really enjoyed the domain branding I had with just.roger-it.co.uk, but recent events and changes to Google have forced me to move this to an ‘official’ top-level domain.

Why Move Now?

Well, actually there are several reasons. One is that Google recently made some drastic alterations to their search function, which has caused quite a shift in the labyrinth of SEO game-play rules, and this move is largely to guard myself against this.

There have also been some significant changes some of the Google’s services. Google Labs provide some tools in the Webmaster Control panel which are now only available to top level domains, not sub domains. This week, Google also altered the way Google Analytics tracking handles sub domains and their relation to top level domains.  It is not clear why all these changes were made, but each one hints that sites on sub domains will be taken less seriously, than the top level domains they will come to depend on a little more heavily.  The need for raw SEO power outweighs the delightful URL sculpting I felt I had going on.

No Need To Adjust Your TV Sets

But such is life, and like a tree in the wind we must be shaped by these changes or else face being broken by the force!  The Manchester SEO Blog is still the same great site it has been, and still endeavours to deliver useful SEO tips and online marketing advice it always has. Please do not adjust your TV sets!

The Manchester SEO Blog recently revealed that .gb.com domains face extreme penalties in Google, with revelations that sparked a storm of controversy in Google Webmasters forum. I am very pleased to present to everyone today evidence that confirms gb.com domains are penalised in Google.

I didn’t intend to take things quite this far, but my hand was forced by gaggle of nay-sayers who didn’t accept there was problem. My friend and I realised that overwhelming empirical evidence was the only route to go.

Proving gb.com Domains are Penalized in Google

We began by compiling a list of 35 .gb.com, .uk.com and .co.uk domains, which were chosen by Google. In each case we did: site:*.gb.com, site:*.uk.com and site:*.co.uk into the Google Search bar to populate our list of URLs. It is our hope that any bias Google has for the order in which domains are returned using this command, will be applied to all tests and can therefore be eliminated as a variable. We also used a random selection of 16 additional hand picked domains for each type of domain from DMOZ.

We chose uk.com domains as these closely resemble gb.com domains in structure and would act as the control, as we suspected uk.com domains were not penalized in Google. We also included .co.uk domains as a comparison that would highlight any other issues of the apparent sub-domain structure of the former two types of domains.

For each domain in turn we did a Google search for:

• The Domain Name
• The Entire <title> Element
• The Company Name
• The Entire META Description

gb.com Domain Penalization Results

The results were astounding – it rapidly became apparent that .uk.com domains had a similar ranking behaviour to .co.uk domains. .gb.com domains on the other hand were usually several pages behind – often ranking on page three, four or five for their own company name or entire title tag. The .co.uk and .uk.com domains however, were usually found on page 1 in most cases.

The entire gb.com domain penalization test Excel Spreadsheet here.

co.uk Domain Ranking Results

uk.com Domain Ranking Results

gb.com Domain Ranking Results

What do these results mean? Well, despite all the opposition who were reluctant to accept there was a problem, clearly gb.com domains do face a penalty in Google. Does this stop you from ranking? No, but there are very few that appear to have high ranking gb.com domains, and the sensible SEO advice would be to avoid these where possible and view this blog entry to find out how to fix it!

Something which has come to my attention recently (and it’s rare that anything does!) is that Google is penalising  .gb.com domains quite severly within it’s search results. After a bout of rigorous testing, the Manchester SEO Blog can confirm that .gb.com domains may hamper your SEO, to such an extent it because very difficult to get these domains to rank well.  This is a warning to anyone who has (or knows someone with!) a .uk.com, .us.com or anything similar. But there is hope!

What Is The Problem with .gb.com Domains in Google?

Like .uk.com and .us.com domains, these domains look like sub domains. Google knows that sub domains have a fair amount of independence from the main site and domain, but will hold all parts equally responsible for the whole. Let’s suppose Sue has sue.gb.com and Fred has fred.gb.com. If Fred were to use black hat SEO techniques and get himself punished, Sue will also suffer because Google will hold her site partly responsible.

As recently as last year it was possible get first page Google listings with .gb.com domains, but alas what appears to have happened is that the www.gb.com homepage is deemed too much like spam for Google to trust any other domains off .gb.com.

I realised the sheer scale of this problem by searching out a hundred .gb.com domains in DMOZ, then copying and pasting their <title> tags into the Google search bar. The highest I saw any domain listed was about page 3, but most were page 5, outranked by their domain WHOIS entry and Alexa Traffic Rank. This is the first sign that something was very wrong beyond simple poor listings!

After some further testing, I can confirm it is not possible to get good rankings with any of these domains in Google, and – for SEO purposes – they should be avoided at all costs!

How Do I Get My .gb.com Domain Listed in Google?

I was able to resolve this problem by simply using a new domain, and setting up a 301 redirect. Believe it or not, Google recognises all the good PR and popularity the .gb.com domain had, but leaves behind the penalty points of being part of that domain. The person I solved this for suddenly shot onto the first page of Google the moment they were indexed around six days later.

How Do I Know If My Domain Is Penalised By Google?

There are several points to check:

• Try to find a page with at least 60 characters in the title tag, then simply copy and paste this into the Google search bar. Nine times in Ten if everything works as it should, you should be on that first page.
• If not, try surrounding this with quotes for an exact match and see if this makes a difference
• Try searching for your website or company name along with your address (if this features on the site). If again you don’t see yourself, this is another possible diagnosis.
• Try searching for your domain name itself. If you find the WHOIS information and Alexa website above yours, we know something is not right

What Does This Mean For .uk.com,  .us.com and Similar Domains?

Firstly, don’t panic! I believe it is unlikely we will see anything similar with the .uk.com .us.com and similar domains, unless the homepages of these sites turn into spam of the same calibre as www.gb.com which I think is unlikely. But nothing stops you being prepared – be sure to have an alternate domain handy. Hopefully you have done the sensible thing already and bought up all domains around your brand names and company name (it makes good sense to do anyway!).

If you suddenly find your site disappears, follow the tests outlined above. If at least two of them fail, then it is probably time to set up a 301 redirect to your other domain. Only do this as a very last resort once you have confirmed this is the root of the problem!