I got an email from Yahoo Groups that said: Welcome to the jbquy group
Hello,
I’ve added you to my jbquy group at Yahoo! Groups, a free, easy-to-use service. Yahoo! Groups makes it easy to send and receive group messages, coordinate events, share photos and files, and more.
Description of the group:
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hu84c3725lgu
Tags: spam
Like many people who live on the web, I get a lot of junk email and phishing emails. Usually, it’s pretty easy to spot them due to misspellings & poor grammar. Today, I got one that tricked me. Here’s the email:
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Subject: Your Google AdWords Campaign!
Your Google AdWords Campaign has successfully been integrated in AdWords Top Accounts. You can now reach your customers with targeted, relevant advertising through this new method as described below.
If you want to take advange of this incredible new Campaign Tool, activate it here: https://www.google.com/adwords/topaccounts/en-US/
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
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This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions after following the steps above, please visit the Google AdWords Help Center at http://adwords.google.com/ support/aw/?hl=en_US to find answers to frequently asked questions and a ‘contact us’ link near the bottom of the page.
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Normally, I don’t click the embedded links unless I’m 100% positive that it’s authentic. Today, I was lazy & clicked it. Fortunately, the anti-phishing tools in Firefox stopped me from connecting to the phishing site. The link takes you to www.allaseminarier.nu
It’s just another reminder to be vigilant & watch out for the bad guys.
Think you know how to show up on Google? Think again. Google tells us they made over 500 changes to how they rank websites in 2009. How’s a small business owner supposed to keep up?
There’s 3 significant changes to Google Place Pages today.
First, Google has really improved the ease of editing a business listing. It’s easier both for business owners to claim their listing and for others to make community edits to a listing. At the top right, there’s now an obvious checkmark & “Owner-verified listing” if the business is verified.
Non-verified listings replace this with 2 simple links: “Edit this place – Business owner?” Previously, the link to claim a business listing on Google was buried several clicks away. Nice improvement.
A few weeks ago, Google stopped showing the Google Maps/Local results for some searches like:
Sacramento Web Design
SEO Memphis TN
Marketing Firm Knoxville
Ad Agency Lexington KY
There was a good discussion on this at Mike Blumenthal’s blog. General consensus was that Google removed them while trying to fix how they were improperly applying Authoritative One Boxes for some searches.
Today, I’m seeing the 7 pack back but only when the search contains a word like “in” or “near” within the search phrase. So you get a 7 pack on “web design in Nashville TN” but no 7 pack on “web design Nashville TN”
Managing your brand’s online reputation can seem like a huge task. While many things you can do are common sense, there’s usually disagreement and confusion over the details. Read the rest of this entry »
How Can Anyone Know How to Get Better Rankings? It’s a fair question.
There’s a TON of info on the web about how to get higher Search Engine (SE) rankings. Unfortunately, much of it is incorrect, conflicting or out of date. But a more basic question is how can we know that anything we do will actually work?
Read the rest of this entry »