Face it, beyond Google, Bing, and Yahoo, there are no other players in the US.  Sure, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller search engines and some are major players in other countries, but here in the US there really are only the big three.  Today the field was officially narrowed to two. (at least for organic results.)  Yahoo announced on their blog today that they have successfully integrated Bing into the backend of their search engine.   Here’s a blog post from Bing saying pretty much the same thing but offering a timeline for the PPC transition to happen.  Am I surprised?  No.  I knew this was coming.  Microsoft has been trying to buy Yahoo since early 2008.

So what does this mean?  It means less competition to deliver awesome organic results.  It means that Yahoo now has Bing’s crappy index.  On Google, I’m #1 for the search “kansas city internet marketing” but in Bingahoo I’m not placed until the bottom of page two.  What’s the #1 result in Bingahoo?  Yellowpages.  Ugh – I remember when yellowpages dominated the search results everywhere before the Google algorithm got sophisticated enough to put them where they actually belonged, instead of relying on artificially created massive link counts.  What’s after Yellowpages?  Directories, junk websites, and spammers.  The Bing index kind of looks like the Google index from about 2003.  Bing is really susceptible to manipulation and delivers what I consider dirty results.  It’s where I go to see the people that are getting filtered out by Google.

Any time there is regulation imposed or a reduction in competition on the web, it’s a sad day for search. RIP Yahoo!

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Facebook has done it again.  Today I went into my privacy settings to turn off Places because I don’t want people tagging me.  Much to my dismay I found that the scoundrels at Facebook have reset my privacy settings AGAIN and worst of all, they turned on by default “Friends can check me in to Places.”  I have talked about Facebook resetting my privacy settings without my consent in a previous blog post and I see that they are at it again.  Maybe this isn’t happening to you – maybe they are just picking on me, but just in case you’d better check your settings.  There are several images at the bottom of this post showing all the different screenshots I’ll be talking about, starting with a screenshot I took of my Places settings.

Top Left Screenshot:
This shot is of the settings as they were in my Facebook account.  I did not turn on the “Friends can check me into places”, it was already enabled by default. I just dropped down the menu to show you that it was checked.

Top Right Screenshot:
Some privacy settings that I mentioned in my 5/19 blog post.  I had turned them off prior to my 5/19 post but Facebook turned them back on so I reset them to “Friends only.”  As you can see from today’s screenshot, Facebook turned these things back on again. Unbelievable. This is at least the third time I’ve disabled this.  The worst part is that the information controlled by these little checkmarks is information that your friends share about you with third-party sites without you – or them – knowing it! If you locked down your privacy settings before, you had better do it again!

Bottom Left Screenshot:
I disabled this feature as my previous post shows, but Facebook apparently doesn’t care about how I want to manage my privacy, they will do what they want.

Bottom Right Screenshot:
Facebook did a good job of burring their new “feature” in your privacy settings by making it difficult to find.  Isn’t it interesting how they hold press conferences about their newest feature, but obscure the feature’s settings?  It’s almost like they don’t want you to find it!  I’m sure they will just re-enable mine soon anyway.  As the screenshot shows, you have to drop down your privacy setting from the top right, click “privacy settings”, and then click the tiny little link to “customize settings.”  Then you have to scroll down the list to find the two little mentions of Places as I noted in the top left screenshot.

I did not change the settings as you see them! This is the default!	I made a post on 5/19 talking about these being reset, and they did it again!
Even more privacy settings turned back on by Facebook	Where to find the settings to shut off Facebook Places

Facebook isn’t interested in what you want to share and what you don’t.  They just want to make as much money as possible off of you.  I guess it’s their right for letting you use their system for free, but now they are just getting greedy.  Shame on Facebook for messing with people like this.  Keep it up Facebook… you’re just priming the pump for the next generation of social networking… hopefully it’ll be something like Diaspora.

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Facebook just announced a feature called Places that is basically a rip-off of Foursquare, a geo-location service.  The CEO of Gowalla – a Foursquare-like service – called this new feature a “an opportunity for additional distribution of our service.”  Think again!  The only thing Facebook is looking to complement is their own pocketbook.

One thing I find questionable about this service is the fact that you can tag friends as being with you at a location.  I don’t want my friends to be able to tell people when I’m not at home, how far I am from my home, and my disposition (at a bar).

Facebook Places is not available to me at this point so I can’t try disabling this feature.  I suspect Facebook will make disabling the Places feature difficult, just like they have with other “features.”  The Facebook mantra: Launch now, worry about privacy later.

As an internet marketer I found it quite interesting that Facebook will “suggest” nearby places that I might like.  Suggest when?  While I’m there?  A day later?  A week later?  How much information will Facebook provide to those suggested places? Will I start getting a lot of unsolicited “coupon” emails?  How long before checking in somewhere equals a “like” on Facebook and a company added to my newsfeed?

Regardless of all the potential problems, I see why Facebook is going down this road.  There’s a huge pool of mostly untapped potential advertisers.  Places sounds like an instant – and huge – revenue stream, one that a small company might not be able to ignore.  If you have a late-night restaurant near a popular bar district you could draw all kinds of new – and loosened up – patrons.

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Attention Webmasters:  If you have used Getty Images for stock photography, you may soon get a letter from them demanding payment for unlicensed use of their images.  Their records aren’t all that good and they seem to be on a fishing campaign to see how many people will be scared into paying their $1,000.00 fine.  Your only recourse; find your receipt or pay!

I’m no advocate for unlicensed use of images, let’s get that clear. I do have a big problem with the way Getty is handling this.  Getty’s behavior in this case is unethical at best. To them it seems the ends justify the means, just like those who steal from them.  They are relying on their image discovery bot called PicScout to find their images on the web and then cross-reference that with their records of purchase.  If they find no match, they are sending the registrar of the domain a letter demanding $1,000.00.  Where does that leave the small business that had their site coded by a third party?  Responsible for the fine.  If you can’t produce your proof of purchase, you have to pay or risk a lawsuit which could result in owing Getty “damages” of up to $150,000 per image!

On top of the unethical mass-mailing, Getty is using their PicScout unethically.  The PicScout bot is disregarding robots.txt instructions, masking it’s identity, bypassing website security measures, and ignoring terms-of-service.  They are without-a-doubt unauthorized visitors to your website.  You can find more information about PicScout’s crawling behavior at IncrediBILL’s blog here.  It’s a little dated, but the overall message is relevant.

What can you do about this?  I recommend blocking the PicScout robot from your site – if you can find it.  If you have the ability to edit your .htaccess file you can follow the tips here: .htaccess bot trap.  Adding that line of code will block robots that don’t obey the robots.txt file.  Since PicScout doesn’t adhere to your rules, they will get blocked.  Careful though – if you mess up your .htaccess file, you can take down your whole site.  For now that’s the only solution I’m aware of.  I’m looking for something like this that would work with IIS and if I find one, I’ll post it here.

The second thing I recommend is to block the Internet Archiver from your website.  Even if you go through all the trouble and expense of repurchasing your images and blocking the PicScout bad robot, you can still get busted for what the Internet Archive shows on your site.  Blocking the IA robot will completely remove current and past versions of your site.  I have talked about the Internet Archiver before and the ramifications of allowing it to index your site.  Check out my post on blocking the internet archiver robot.

To sum up: Don’t steal, pay for your images.  Someone is trying to feed their family by shooting them and selling them on sites like Getty.  If you have a third-party company design and develop your site, make sure they provide you with receipts and licenses for every image they use.

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