While no official details have been provided outside of the few comments made during the SXSW session, there is a lot of speculation as to just what this might mean and how it would effect sites that are being optimized. We can glean some answers from the comments themselves, but I wouldn’t expect too much more clarification that isn’t specifically designed to frighten SEOs and Web marketers into greater compliance with their webmaster guidelines.

Then again, following such guidelines is generally good practice for building a user-friendly website. Search engines, after all, just want to be like any other users (other than they don’t place orders for your products or services). Just for fun, let’s look at some “what if?” scenarios. These are all possibilities, and, even if there is little chance of them being worked into the algorithm, they might give you some good ideas about what you can do to better your online marketing efforts.

Over Optimization What-Ifs

What if Google penalized “optimization signals” even if they were beneficial to the site visitor?

I admit this was one of the fist things that came to my mind. When you say “over-optimization penalty,” it makes it sound as if the search engines want to penalize optimization period. Sure, they don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but it makes you wonder if they want to give unoptimized sites a way to compete with the optimized sites. They could do this by looking at specific things that SEOs typically do that “normal” sites don’t. What could those things be?

• Always placing the keyword at the front of the title tag
• Always placing the keyword at the front of the H1 tag
• Always using keywords in the heading tags
• Using keywords consistently in navigation on content links
• Too many instances of a single phrase OR variations of that phrase

Are any of these possible? Sure. Likely? Probably not.

Some of these are already part of the algorithm, such as too many keywords on the page, though I find it curious that this was specifically mentioned. This is something (good) SEOs have been preaching against for years. All in all, I’d say most sites that are optimized in ways that make the site better for visitors are not going to be negatively affected – unless they cross the line in other areas.

What if Google started penalizing too many links?

This was also mentioned and begs the question, what does it mean to have “too many” links? Perhaps Google knows the answer to this.

It may be as simple as comparing your link count with that of your competitors and seeing if it’s significantly out of proportion. In some cases, this can be a good indicator that the site is manipulating links to get an advantage in rankings. However, sites can also get a number of quick, legitimate links through (positive or negative) PR, contests, viral videos, social bursts and more. I would bet that this will be a part of the over-optimization algorithm, but it would need to be used in conjunction with other factors.

What if Google started looking for a proper “balance” of link text?

This is something that could easily be considered and has been talked about by SEOs already. It’s possible that “natural” sites have a “typical” ratio of keyword-rich link text pointed at their pages vs. some generic link text. SEO’d sites, on the other hand, may have a greater percentage of keyword-linked text that can set off some alarms. The search engines might decide to either devalue many of those links or put an outright penalty on the site for “optimized” linking practices.

If this “what-if” becomes part of the algorithm, it means that link building efforts will go on but with less keyword optimization. It’s possible that this could be used in conjunction with the “too many links what-if” above. Together, they might give the search engine a good idea that the site is gaming the system.

What if Google matched link growth to social engagement growth?

If the search engine sees links growing consistently, but the social engagement is low or non-existent, it can be a signal that the links are manipulated rather than natural. I think it would take a pretty aggressive link campaign for this type of thing to be clearly noticeable to the search engines, but it’s certainly possible. The idea would be to match link growth with social growth. Anything that is disproportionate would trigger an alarm.

In truth, this could work both ways. If a site is getting a lot of social “engagement” but very few links, it might tell the engines that the social sphere is being manipulated, as well. Either way, you would want your site links and social engagement to grow consistently (even if not directly proportionately). I would think a site that is naturally interesting to visitors would grow in both areas at the same time.

What if Google measured social engagement rather than just retweets and shares?

This would be an addendum to the “what-if” above. But instead of monitoring social growth, the search engine would also be looking at true social engagement. We can all ask our friends to tweet or retweet our links; however, how many of them are doing nothing more than passing the information on? Are they commenting? Are the talking back and forth? Or are they just sharing and forgetting about it?

True social engagement could be a factor as to how much people are really interested in what you are offering. Social media without engagement is like speaking into a megaphone in an empty desert. It doesn’t matter what you say or how many times it’s re-broadcasted, if no one is interacting or even caring, it’s not truly social.

What if Google started measuring traffic through every link or social share before allowing it to influence rankings?

This is my favorite “what if.”

Google discovers thousands of links every day. If you’re building links, the idea is to get Google to find each link and filter that into the algorithmic valuing of your site. But what if a link wasn’t a link until it was actually clicked and followed? And what if the value of that link increased as it continued to get clicked? That would mean you can get links from articles, directories, comments, blog posts and whatever else, but none of it would matter unless someone is clicking the link to your site. And, the more clicks that link gets, the more value it transfers.

The hurdle to implementing such an algorithmic signal is that Google has to be able to know when every link is clicked. And it can only know that if you have Google Analytics installed on your site. Not every site does. But it’s possible that they can use the data they have to surmise if other links on similar sites and pages are delivering traffic to your competitors. It’s a bit far-fetched, but it would certainly make for an interesting algorithm. Google would somehow have to measure site engagement time after the click to prevent SEOs from manipulating that, as well.

This factor could easily apply to every link and every social share on the Web. Bottom line: no traffic, no value!

What if Google really didn’t mean it as it sounded?

This rates the highest on the probability scale. Google wasn’t talking to SEOs; they were talking to regular business owners. The “over-optimization” penalty may be nothing more than what Google has been doing for years – making their algorithm better by looking at certain signals more than others and adding or removing signals as needed. It’s entirely possible that Google is just now catching up to some of the things that SEOs have been preaching for years on how to build good websites that people and search engines love.

But speculation is fun (if not a bit scary), no?

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Dave’s Answer:

It’s not surprising that you’re a bit confused by the Photo Stream service that’s a much-vaunted part of iCloud. The fact is that while it’s slick magic to have pictures just magically transfer between your devices, it’s a bit hard to figure out what’s going on and Apple hasn’t made it any easier with an obviously missing “send to photostream” feature or “don’t include in photostream”, for that matter.

On iOS devices, there’s an iCloud setting area in “Settings” that lets you specify what you want synchronized or backed up to the cloud-based service, including whether or not you want that particular device to subscribe to Photo Stream. If you do opt in, new photos will also show up on the device as well as photos take on the device transferring to other subscribing devices.

On the Mac, however, it’s a bit more confusing. The photo stream itself is going to show up either in iPhoto or Aperture, depending on which you use, but it’s invisible until you turn on the feature and there are some photographs to share. Before it’s enabled and there are pics, you simply won’t see the extra tab in the program.

But let’s start with the System Preferences…, where you’ll need to click on the “iCloud” button. Here’s what you see:

As you can tell, I sync up just about everything with iCloud except Photo Stream. To turn it on is simple, though. A click of a checkbox does the trick…

Now in Aperture, there’s a new option on the left side: “Photo Stream”:

The first time you enable it, you’ll get this heads up from Apple:

Note that any pictures in Aperture (or iPhoto, if that’s what you’re using) you drag onto the Photo Stream option are automatically shared out to other subscribing devices, as are all the pictures in any future import you do from a camera into Aperture (or iPhoto). That can be a lot!

Once I have added some pictures to the stream, either on my Mac, iPad or iPhone, they show up automatically everywhere. Here’s one that I took on my phone and that showed up in Aperture no less than fifteen seconds later, without any work or button clicking on my part:

Quite handy, once you get it working. Don’t like a picture that’s in your stream? In Aperture, you can simply Ctrl-click on it and one of the contextual menu options is delete:

Easy enough. The same holds true in iPhoto too, if you’re a fan of that program instead.

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Google has announced that registration will kick off on March 27th at 7 am PDT. They make a note to say that “the early bird catches the worm,” which is a nice way of saying you better be online trying to get tickets at 7 am. As 9to5 Google points out, tickets to the event sold out in less than an hour last year.

In order to register for tickets, you’ll have to have a Google+ account. And in order to pay for your tickets, you’ll have to use Google wallet. A general admission ticket to the event will run you $900, while certain academic enrollments can lessen that price to $300.

Attendees have code labs, hackathons, and product sessions to look forward to alongside the keynote and other presentations. If you can’t make the trip (or don’t wake up early enough to buy your pass), much of the conference will be streamed live for your home-viewing pleasure.

While you wait for the conference to kick off, you can head to the I/O site and build your own little machines as part of Google’s latest Chrome Experiment. You can then share those machines on Google+. Doing a Google+ hashtag search for #io12 is a good way to check out these machines as well as see all the latest from the Google Developers team on the upcoming event.

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Step 1: Creating The Flash Document:

After you have created a new Flash document in your version of Flash, click on the “Document Properties” button (which has the default dimensions of 550 x 400) on the Properties Inspector. This will load the “Document Properties” window.

Within the “Document Properties” window, change the Dimensions of your Flash document to 400 (width) and 300 (height). This will help make the stage for our chalkboard more manageable. Also, change the Background Color from white to black. After these parameters have been set, press the “OK” button.

After you have closed the “Document Properties” window, the stage will transform by changing its size and color (as shown below).

Step 2: Inserting ActionScript:

Now that we have the stage set up, we are now ready to apply the ActionScript code to our Flash document. This will actually make the chalkboard work.

To apply the ActionScript code that will make the Flash document function, click on the “Actions – Frame” text just above the Properties Inspector. This will load the Actions Inspector.

Within the Actions Inspector, insert the following code:

_root.createEmptyMovieClip("chalk", 0);

_root.onMouseDown = function() {
   chalk.moveTo(_xmouse, _ymouse);
   chalk.lineStyle(10, 0xFFFFFF, 100);

   _root.onMouseMove = function() {
      chalk.lineTo(_xmouse, _ymouse);
   }
}

_root.onMouseUp = function() {
   _root.onMouseMove = noLine;
}

After you have applied the code to the stage in the Actions Inspector, you may now test your chalkboard. To do this, from the Control menu, select the Test Movie option. You will be able to draw on the stage while you are testing the movie.

If you want to change the scale/size of your chalk, within the chalk.lineStyle line, change the first number within the parentheses (in this case 10). The higher the number, the broader the thickness of the line will be.

You can also change the color of the chalk to a different color. In this tutorial, I have the color of the chalk set to white (0xFFFFFF); however, you can change the color to whatever you like. To do this, enter the hexidecimal color code for the color you would like to use in the second part of the chalk.lineStyle line. For a full list of hexidecimal color codes, please visit this site.

Please be sure to leave any questions or comments below in this post’s comments section.

So this week I’m giving you a list of the top ways to KILL your rankings. Obviously this isn’t your goal, so above these tactics at all cost!

1. Cloaking

It’s the process of displaying different content to search engines and users. Google expects it’s search engine bots to see the same content that a user would see navigating through your site. If it discovers there’s a discrepancy aimed at deceiving the Google bots, then ranking penalties will be issued. This can include banning from the Google index.

2. Duplicate Content

Search engines don’t want to index multiple versions of similar content. Some automated content generation tools rely on recycling content which is not favourable. Google is strict in filtering out content they deem to be similar or nearly duplicate in nature.

3. Hidden Text

It’s a technique used to show search engine spiders text that human visitors do not see. While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk to reward ratio is low for most legitimate sites.

4. Link Exchanges & Link Farms

Reciprocal linking schemes often facilitated by a site devoted to directory pages are not a good source of links. Link exchanges usually allow links to sites of low or no quality, and add no value themselves.

5. Links from Banned or Malware Sites

Links from other websites which have been already banned by Google, and are known to contain malware will have a negative impact on your rankings. Google will consider your site less bad by association.

6. Content on the Site Promoting Paid Links

Google has really clamped down on websites who sell links, especially for the purposes of SEO. So if you’re currently selling links on your site to help other sites with their ranking efforts, this is will not bode well for your own ranking. If you’re offering links as a form of advertising (hopefully using nofollow), that’ll appease the ranking gods at Google.

7. High % of Inbound Links with Same Anchor Text

We all know that anchor text is critical in your link building efforts, but if your pages are only getting links with the same anchor text, then it looks unnatural. It’s good to get a mix of links with different anchor text to keep things looking organic.

8. Over Optimisation

Over optimization? I hear you ask. Yes, it’s easy to over optimise pages. At the end of the day, Google wants your content to be designed for the user, not the Google bots. So strategies like keyword stuffing, excessive internal linking, keyword spamming in meta data should be avoided. Get your balance right and you should be safe.

9. Doorway Pages

Pages designed to rank for highly targeted search queries, typically designed to redirect searchers to a page with other advertisements. If the page would have a unique purpose outside of search then search engines are generally fine with it, but if the page only exists because search engines exist then search engines are more likely to frown on the behavior.

10. Content Scraping

Scraping search-engine results pages or other sources of content (especially without permission) to create content for your website is a major faux par. Google’s looking for sites that produce valuable original content. Just scraping others reduces your authority.

And that’s a wrap…remember that when you’re investing time in optimising your website, you should avoid these strategies.

For those of you visual people out there, here’s a cool infographic that the people down at SEO.com produced which, with it’s horror theme, covers the black hat tactics to avoid. Enjoy

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The MacBook Air is currently available in Citing sources in the industry supply chain, DigiTimes says that Apple could begin mass production of the new model “in the near future.” A 14-inch MacBook Air would be intended to appeal to the Asian PC market, where 14-inch laptops are apparently the norm.

As always, rumors like this should be taken with a grain of salt. If true, though, this would not be the first time in recent memory that Apple has taken steps to increase its presence in Asian markets. A recent deal with China Telecom brought Apple’s iPhone to the carrier. Previously only one of China’s three main mobile carriers – China Unicom – offered the iPhone. Apple has had some trouble getting the iPhone to catch on in China, the world’s largest mobile phone market. A recent report showed that Apple actually lost market share in China last year, falling to fifth place behind Samsung, Nokia, Huawei Technologies, and ZTE Corporation.

Would you like to see a larger MacBook Air? Tell us what you think in the comments.

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Luckily, Matt Cutts is back again with his latest video answering the question “are paid directories held to the same standards as paid links?”

And the answer…

A paid directory is much like buying a permanent link on a site – it’s expected to be on a certain relevant page for much longer than a guest post for example.

However, Google look’s a little deeper at link directories to ensure they haven’t just sprung up overnight by an owner who bought a recently expired but decent PageRank domain and is attempting to make quick money off of people who are willing to buy links just to appease Google. When Google comes across these types of directories it will usually lower the page rank of the directory, so that it isn’t seen as a trusted source for website’s looking for link love.

If the directory looks to be primarily a link scheme, then Google will hold the paid directory to the same standard as paid links.

That’s not to say that all paid directories are bad. Yahoo! and DMOZ are both good examples of directories that are long established, use quite stringent editorial discretion (to eliminate spammy sites) and will put your link on to a static page with minimal outbound links, which is what Google prefers.

So basically not all paid directories are equal in the eyes of search engine giant, Google.

Before you decide to pay to be in an online directory or choose to create one I suggest you watch the video.

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The main issue faced seems to be the amount of time it takes to find and contain the breach. In 2009, according to the Verizon’s 2010 Data Breach Investigations Report, 31% of breaches resulted in a compromise within minutes. In comparison, 37% took months to discover and 29% took months to contain. Verizon reported in their 2011 study that not much changed in a year. In 2010 33% of breaches took only minutes to compromise data while a staggering 75% weren’t discovered for weeks or even months. Nearly 50% of these breaches took weeks to contain.

As McAfee sees it, the clear solution is to prevent these breaches and, if they occur, discover them faster. Nearly 75% of businesses now rely on the built in security in their database suites which relies predominantly on audits and logs to monitor database activity. As McAfee describes it’s new Database Activity Monitoring software in their data sheet,

“Alerts are sent directly to the monitoring dashboard with full details of the policy violation for remediation purposes. High-risk violations can be configured to automatically terminate suspicious sessions and quarantine malicious users, allowing time for the security team to investigate the intrusion.”

In addition, the software offers virtual patching, allowing a noninvasive way to temporarily apply vendor patches while sufficient application testing can be conducted.

]]> http://www.devwebpro.com/verizon-study-shows-database-insecurity-mcafee-seeks-to-protect/feed/ 0 http://www.devwebpro.com/verizon-study-shows-database-insecurity-mcafee-seeks-to-protect/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tutorial99/~3/DK_wkjuRDw8/ http://www.devwebpro.com/table-locking-for-dummies-mysql/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:32:41 +0000 Bryan Young http://www.devwebpro.com/?p=8695 Writing a multi-threaded program is hard enough to do without having to worry about data concurrency in your database. Lucky for us, MySQL has the methods necessary to help us keep our data current built in. There are two main kinds of locks supported by MySQL, table-level locks and row-level locks. Table-level locks are supported by default, while row-level locks are only supported by some engines, most notably InnoDB.

Table-level locks are achieved through the LOCK TABLES command. The two types of locks are read locks and write locks. Read locks allow data to be read by other threads, but blocks any thread (including itself) from updating that table. This kind of lock is useful if you need to make several calls to a table and the data cannot change between reads. Write locks all the current thread to read and write to the table, while blocking all other threads from reading and writing that table. One use for this type of lock is a queue, where you want to be able to read the first item in the queue, then delete it before another thread reads that same row.

Row-level locking is much more intricate, and can potentially speed up your database usage if used correctly. If you are using the InnoDB engine (or another supporting engine), you can lock just one row of a table, blocking access to it but still allowing other threads access to the rest of the table. As long as your threads are looking at different rows, there will be no slowdown at all. Like in table-level locking, there are two types of locks that can be used. Both of these locks requires a transaction to be started first. SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE allows other threads to read but not update the row(s) selected by the statement. SELECT ... FOR UPDATE blocks other threads from reading or writing to the row(s) selected. Both locks are kept until the transaction is finished.

Dave’s Answer:

I know the wireless speaker you’re talking about, actually, as we have one too, the Logitech Z515 wireless speaker (they need cooler names for their products, I think!). It’s nice, portable, sounds good for the size and works as an audio device for any Bluetooth compatible source, including iPhones and, yes, MacBooks and MacBook Pro computers. It’ll also work with PCs that support Bluetooth, of course: it’s platform agnostic.

Getting Bluetooth up and running on any computer can be a bit tricky because it’s not a commonly used service, so it tends to be tucked away in the dusty corners of the operating system. On the Mac you can have a Bluetooth icon on your menu bar, but it’s not enabled by default so you’re still going to have to delve a bit into the system preferences to turn things on and get them running. There are two steps required too: first you have to “pair” the bluetooth speaker with your computer, then once that’s done you can select the new device as an audio output device and use it. It’s easier the second time.

Ready?

Start by launching your “System Preferences…” from the Apple menu:

Once launched, you’ll see a lot of icons representing different areas of your system. Look for the Bluetooth icon, as highlighted below:

Click on Bluetooth and you’ll see a list of previously paired Bluetooth devices — if any — along with a few minimally labelled control buttons:

This is where it’s confusing the first time you use it because I always expect either for the Bluetooth device to magically show up or a button labeled “Add new Bluetooth Device”. Instead, click on the small “+” button on the lower left. Now the Bluetooth Setup Assistant will launch and it will see your new speaker after a few moments:

Tip: If it doesn’t see the speaker, make sure that you have the device in “pairing” mode. On the particular Logitech speaker you’re talking about, that’s done by pushing both the “+” and “-” speaker volume buttons simultaneously for about ten seconds. On other devices, there are similar techniques for moving into bluetooth pairing mode: check with the instructions that came with the device. It also can take a few seconds sometimes for the device to be “seen” by the computer.

Once it is, however, you can click on the “Continue” button on the lower right…

Hopefully no more than five seconds will pass and the MacBook Pro will be able to successfully pair with the new speaker:

Looks good, but you’re not done, as is obvious if you look closely at the new speaker in the Bluetooth panel: it’s not “connected” yet:

To use the speaker as an external audio device on your Mac OS X system, select the speaker, then click on the “gear” menu on the lower left and select “Use as Audio Device”:

It can take 5-10 seconds to properly switch, but after a short period, the device should be listed as connected:

Done. Now just crank iTunes and you’ll find the audio comes out of the external bluetooth speaker. Nice!

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