The dangers of ReTweeting (it can make you feel like a wazzock)

February 28, 2010 – 1:49 pm

Sometimes I sit and read stuff on Twitter and just hit the retweet button without thinking about it much(assuming the idiocy of the post or something else would come through) and some times the daftness is mine.

Today I did just such a thing and within minutes I get DM’d asking what I was doing mentioning such a story. TBH I can’t remember RT it but ignorance is no excuse!

I get sent a link to an article on the SEOConsultants.com website – a website which has more stuff on it that I can keep up with TBH and the the value of their RSS comes into it’s own – and the horror hits home. I’ve just in some way endorsed the sort of b*****ds I continually rail against.

Cheers to PageOneResults for making me feel like a complete wazzock on a Sunday morning and teaching me a useful lesson – I must think before I RT! And TBH more than that. Hitting RT does not always assure that everyone knows why you’re RT’ing, and remember kids check out those you’re mentioning as the web’s a dangerous place, full of dangerous companies, doing nasty things and in the same way you wouldn’t link to a toxic domain containing crap hitting RT provides a social link to equally toxic stuff (it’s your rep on the line not just a domain).

Self flagellation over for today…. I hope. Off to do 100 hand written lines of “I must not hit RT without thinking”, “I must not hit RT without thinking”,”I must not hit RT without thinking”…

By mercurythread | Posted in Blogging, General Daftness | Comments (0)

Daily Record website makes amends

February 24, 2010 – 3:13 pm

Sometimes it’s good to take all the glory and today I shall :) whether it is warranted or not.

Whilst wandering through my Twitter a/c for the day – having read about Google doing credit card comparison and Google staff being sentenced for taking off a video of some kid beating up an autistic kid (way to go the Italian court system) I saw Dr Aleks Krotoski mentioning that she had been labelled a he over at the Daily Record.

Did a quick search for the journalists name over in google with email, got an email address, sent email and quarter of an hour later it was changed :)

So duly I’m claiming all credit for them fixing it to a more correct sexual descriptor – using she!

Daily Record call the cute Dr Aleks a he :(

Daily Record call the cute Dr Aleks a he :(

I changed the Internet for the better – I believe – now back to some black belt ninja SEO (ok sumo SEO may be more appropriate but I’m sure I’ll start the diet soon).

By mercurythread | Posted in Blogging, General Daftness | Comments (0)

World of Sofas, Falkirk… continued

February 4, 2010 – 2:26 pm

In my previous rant about World of Sofas I was ready to lose it completely. I’ve given it some time and now I find it’s going to be April before the living room furniture is going to arrive! Just to recap I ordered at the start of October 2009 and my couch will be here in April 2010.

They have offered to give me my deposit back – and the manager at World of Sofas was apologetic but it still doesn’t help me as a customer. He also acknowledged that their customer service had been woeful by them not giving me the correct information at any time – they found out before Xmas that it wasn’t going to be here but maintained it would be up to Xmas-eve for example.

Either I go and order a new suite (god knows how long thats going to take to turn up) or sit and accept that its all gone seriously wrong. And TBH I’m so angry at the whole thing I can’t face starting the debacle all over again.

  • There has been no written communication from the company on any of this. To me using the telephone is a way to back track every time. If nothing physically exists how can you prove it happened. I could go as far as recording our conversations but nmo doubt I’d get sued for not having played them a pre-recorded message before hand.
  • There has been no goodwill gesture from World of Sofas. I’m not looking for one but to not offer a single thing seems to place their business before consumers.
  • I have to phone them. At no point have they phoned when they promised to. Anyone would think World of Sofas were trying to get away from me.

Oh and did I mention their websites awful at finding anything. But I’m off topic. Am planning a party during April to celebrate my furniture being delivered. But I did that at Xmas as I wanted furniture for Xmas. And don’t get me started on the decorating that is planned for after the stuff is delivered from World of Sofas.

By mercurythread | Posted in Blogging | Comments (0)

I still can’t manage to moderate a forum

February 3, 2010 – 4:02 pm

A couple of times I’ve thought about developing a forum – generally its about whisky – but I never manage to get to the final stage of launching it. Generally due to the spamming which I’m sure would take place.

Andy has bravely decided to launch one – silly boy – about his pet interests in everything (environ)mental. His Green Forum has already started to get battered by me – generally complaining about anything and everything. So good luck to him. I’ve probably already started the warning flares going off in his head. It’s in PHPBB so no doubt he’ll have to keep it uptodate to stop it becoming a mess of porn and Rx (I’m a pessimist after my experiences of a news engine about whisky).

L8rs

By mercurythread | Posted in Blogging, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Tenders, eastenders and the chameleon search is still awful

January 22, 2010 – 4:11 pm

Over the past couple of weeks there has been discussions going on around the way that Google.co.uk result sets are being formed to do with “search engine optimisation” and “search engine optimization”. Two of the better posts come from Sean @ Hobo and Andrew Girdwood from BMM (yes they’re dofollow links to competing sites – I am in a good mood today). But for me the more interesting Google problems still remain in their textual analysis resulting in Chameleon search. Specifically to do with tenders – where I have a client that’s enduring a nightmare in terms of CTR from natural results on this term as a result of this intrusion into the SERPs.

Read More »

By mercurythread | Posted in Blogging, google | Comments (1)

What the Yell are you upto!

January 21, 2010 – 11:29 am

There are some days when I start to hate the ways of the online world, and Colin (who’s used to work with me over the  Equator SEO company and is now working for himself over at Boyd Digital) just posted about the hassles and pains he’s been having with Yell. Basically wasting his time with phone calls and not delivering on what they initially promised by a significant margin.

I can’t say I’m overly surprised as I had the same issues a couple of years ago (excluding the PPC hassles he seems to be accruing) – but yell stealing his brand as his research appears to show is taking the whole thing too far. Has anyone else had similar issues with Yell?

By mercurythread | Posted in Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engines | Comments (0)

Thanks to the Guys at NY Deli Glasgow

January 21, 2010 – 10:45 am

Quick post to say thanks to the Guys at the NY Deli in Glasgow for delivering the SEO team breakfast. Office delivery for food in Glasgow – simple concept, but no one else does it. They’re also launching online ordering too which should make a fantastic, healthy change from the Dominos pizza we seem to internittently order – generally when Gav’s on holiday.
I love the food from this wee shop on Woodlands road in Glasgow – if you’re passing say hi from me and try the Thai chicken soup, the chicken with pesto and roasted pepper sandwiches is also pretty fab. Would be going there for lunch today but have instead decided to walk up to the Bon Accord for a quick whisky at lunch time to add onto my whisky blog – its a hard life but someone has to do it.

Ok back to writing some SEO proposals I march with a full stomach and dreaming of Caol Ila.

By mercurythread | Posted in General Daftness | Comments (0)

Another example of Google Local being rubbish

January 20, 2010 – 5:16 pm

It is to Google eternal disservice that the local results for queries delivers such utter rubbish within its result set – too much rubbish. People who are not helping me get to useful data filling up the entire system or trying to get affiliate commissions just wasting what can be a really useful service.
I’ve just been looking for a “hotel in ascot”, fancied a wee trip down to watch some horses and the result set for the ‘one box’ component is awful.

  1. De Vere Venues Sunningdale Park and Maxdonald Berystede – going to a government site. Whats wrong with the hoteliers site. And is the other Sunningdale Park listed with marker “B” not the same hotel
  2. “This is berkshire” does not seem the right website to feature the Ramada Plaza – why doesn’t the link go to the hotel (which is also listed in the further result set)

My general gripe is that the results are not showing the people who own the businesses do not feature even for their own hotels – the results are spammed. The results may not be useless – as the pages you end up on contain information. But they are certainly not useful.

For the next couple of weeks I’m going to hack through Google Local and see what if anything can be done to these sorts of rubbish results to make them better.

By mercurythread | Posted in google, google local | Comments (0)

World of Sofas delivery problems (Falkirk)

January 14, 2010 – 12:32 pm

As you have may guessed I’m going to rant here – not going to be about marketing I’m afraid just a good old fashioned seriously annoyed with a company rant. Here we go on World of Sofas.

Ordering a Sofa @ World of Sofas, Falkirk

We went in at the start of October and decided to order a new set of living room furniture. We were going to wait until Xmas but we thought that having a new set of furniture for Christmas would be a bit more expensive but we wanted furniture. We went in, and the staff were really helpful (but who heard of a salesman not being).

Anyway we ordered from the World of Sofas branch in Falkirk on the 3rd of October 2009 – as it would all be sorted for Xmas.  In all honesty we expected it significantly before Xmas but so much the better.

Ordered Sofa and everything goes dead from World of Sofas, Falkirk

Nothing is heard, so just before Xmas I send an email (through the web form at the World of Sofas website), and I get and email about how someone will be in touch about delivery the next week. Nothing again – so I phone and get told that there is no way it will be delivered before Xmas but it will be in the first two weeks after new year for sure.

OK I’m now a bit angered at World of Sofas but these things happen and it’s snowing everywhere so no doubt it’ll be here.

Still no contact from World of Sofas, Falkirk

So I email (through the world of sofas website form again) and someone calls me – fantastic someone actually does customer service I think. She can’t help me but someone will phone on Wednesday. No one calls!

Thursday (today) I phone them. They can’t help as the information is on a different system. She’ll need to call me back. As World of Sofas have a tendency not to call back on general past performance I arrange to call back instead.

I call World of Sofas again…

Guess what! My furniture is not in the warehouse. It’s not even been made – apparently there was a problem with the fabric. Which they knew about weeks ago and no one bothered to tell me. One quick call – “Hi, sorry theres a problem with your order. We apologise etc” – would have saved a whole lot of consternation and anger. Good, organised customer service.

Anyway World of Sofas don’t know when it’ll be made. World of Sofas don’t know when it’ll get to the warehouse. World of Sofas don’t seem to have a clue what they are up to in any way, manner, shape of form. Oh and the managers not available so no one with any sense of authority can deal with me.

Oh well so here I sit. Bemused, angry and fed up with the whole World of Sofas disaster if I am completely honest.

Next time I’ll be shopping somewhere that has built up a modicum of brand equity (it’s difficult to build but really easy to throw away as World of Sofas demonstrate) – maybe go to Sterling Furniture in Tillicounltry near Sterling or Reid Furniture instead.

By mercurythread | Posted in Shopping | Comments (1)

One hundered pushups – we’ll see

January 12, 2010 – 11:50 am

Ok Mr Bontana has once again managed to get me to agree to something stupid. This time its pushups. I can see the pain on the horizon already but as I am getting married and need to shift some of the winter insulation for my wedding pics am going to embrace the pain and work through the course of prescribed pain offered by One Hundred Pushups. Of course the whole Equator SEO chapter will be doing this (was going to use a horrible phrase such as Equatorites but would prefer to shoot myself in the head that use that kind of marketing agency babble).

It must be the changes in PageRank that’ve affected my brain to the degree that I’m going to do this. First stab will be on Thursday night – as I’m whisky tasting tonight which knocks today and tomorrow out. Need to be in peak performance to achieve my goals.

By mercurythread | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)