Have you been sitting around, bored out of your mind and wondering what nefarious and mind-blowingly ridiculous things your favorite little search engines have been up to lately? Here’s a quick roundup in case you haven’t been paying attention to all the ethical aspects of our collective internet obsession…

Yahoo!
Yahoo recently claimed to have simply been obeying Chinese law when handing over personal details of Wang Xiaoning, a Chinese man who had been openly critical of the Chinese government. Wang Xiaoning was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison. His horrific crime was promoting democracy through the use of an online forum. In response to this, and other incidents, Yahoo is being sued in a U.S. court for aiding and abetting torture in China. Yahoo’s response to the lawsuit? The users knew the risks they were taking when they violated Chinese law.

My take on this? Yahoo should never have set up shop in China in the first place. Yes, they should have to obey Chinese laws if they’re operating over there, but when will it be time to refuse to do business with oppressive regimes?

Google
The National Legal and Policy Center, a U.S.-based ethics group, is appealing to Congress to prevent Google from allowing pirated movies to appear on YouTube. They’re really, really upset about it too. My take on this one? Copyright violations and pirated movies? Ye gads the world is going to hell in a handbasket. If this is the worst thing you’re doing, you’re still better than anyone else. I’m always first in line for a pirated version of absolutely anything. So, if you have anything good, let me know.

In news that’s so weird you think it must be a hoax, Google is currently being sued for $5m by an American man (figures) named Dylan Stephen Jayne who says that, when his social security number is viewed upside down, it forms a scrambled version of the word “Google” and thus his life is in danger. His complaint to the court was also handwritten. This man is most likely distantly related to me, since crazy hijinks of this type seem to run rampant through the Joyce genes. Also, when I write out the first letter of my 12 favorite punk bands, it forms an anagram of “Jayne is crazy” so I guess this is my last post, seeing as I’ll soon be gunned down. Um, I think my take on this has thus been made quite obvious. This guy could take make a freight train take a dirt road.

MSN
Microsoft is seeking seeking $100,000 in damages per domain name in a typo-squatting case against Anthony Peppler. Peppler could be on the hook for as much as $9.5 million. Apparently this horrible man has purchased domain names that are “confusingly similar” to MSN domains. For example, if you’re an idiot and you misspell MSN, you might go to one of Peppler’s domains. Apparently it’s a bad idea to confuse consumers. My take on this? If you’re typing in an MSN-related site, you deserve to get tricked. Peppler should take it one step further and create software that pops a fist out of the user’s computer screen to punch MSN users in the face too.

Let me know if I’ve missed any other egregious misuses of public trust…

Stumble this post!

I’ve been seriously slack at the blogpost writing lately….sorry girls for the delay in this post…no excuses, I’ll kick myself up the backside =)

For the last couple of weeks I seem to have been haunted with questions about domains, and it’s really getting to me how little people think this through. It’s quiet a few things to consider when choosing a domain, here are some tips and “rules” (my rules, you don’t need to follow them but you would be stupid not to…)

Choosing a brand – what’s the competition?
If you are building a brand, you obviously need the brand name as a domain, that’s essential. But if you have the opportunity to get involved in the branding process from the start it’s imperative to check whether any other companies have the same brand name, as well as whether the domain is available. Basically if there are loads of companies with the same name you are going to have to compete to appear in the search engines for your own brand name. Now this might not seem like a “biggy” but it really can be, even if they are not even slightly the same type of business as yours. I have recently been doing SEO for a client that has trouble ranking for their brand name and the companies they are competing against in the SERPs literally have hundreds of thousands of incoming links, ouch!! I’m pretty sure I can safely say that everyone wants to at least rank for their own bleeding company name. So considering analysing the SERPs for competition BEFORE would be a freakin great idea.

Get the freakin .com for god sake
Ok when you are choosing a domain, if the .com is not available don’t sodding buy it. And whatever you do don’t JUST buy the .com. Get the .net .org and if you are a UK business buy .co.uk as well. Although .info and .biz won’t you get any traffic they might be worth picking up as well. I also have it from a very good source that .tv domains are going to blow up in the next year and will be great for any social networking sites.

Get a unique domain, but don’t do a Flickr
Having a unique domain that is easy to remember is very important but don’t make it so freakin unique that people can’t type it. And if you do insist in being all hip with the kids and you want to buy 2nite.com make sure you buy the logical, properly spelt domain as well. Now why the heck does Flickr not own Flicker.com???

Get some descriptive domains and 301 them
Obviously I’m not saying buy 100 different domains, but it can’t hurt to buy a few extra descriptive domains and 301 redirect them. Especially if your brand name is not descriptive of your business, now don’t just buy some random descriptive domains but put some thought into it. Do some keyword research and find out which keywords are the most descriptive and would attract the most traffic. Now I’m sure I’ll have loads of people disagreeing with me on this one, saying that keywords in the domain is not beneficial. My comment: Rubbish!!! Having your primary keywords in your domain can help you rank. I would also recommend using hyphens if you want to use two keywords in the domain as hyphens tells the search engines that it’s two separate words, BUT don’t have more than two hyphens, that’s just ridiculous.

Old domains – a pot of gold
If you can get hold of a previously owned domain for a cheap buck, maybe even a descriptive old domain (ok now I’m feeling high!!), then do it! Obviously you will have to do some background checking first and make sure you are not buying some old porn site as that could have some seriously bad history with the search engines and do more harm than good. But that should be a given, do your research if you are buying a previously owned domain.

Lastly – better three more than traffic lost
Heck, I don’t know where I was going with that heading (it’s past midnight it doesn’t need to make sense). Basically, it’s better to buy a few too many domains and own every version that you possibly can (if you can afford it) then just to buy the .com and .co.uk and then discover some wanker bought the .net and .biz and is stealing your traffic.

Happy domain hunting!!

Other blogposts about domains:
Rand Fishkins tips on domains
14th Colony on how to choose a breakthrough domain
Search Engine Land on best practise coroporate domain management

Stumble this post!