Frog's Digital Design Blog » patrick altoft

SEO Hot Topics at Think Visibility

Gary Hartley — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:33:16 +0000

Leeds welcomed a new SEO conference this year with the arrival of Think Visibility in Leeds. Some of the industries top speakers were on the line up, covering topics such as Link Buying, Silver-bullet Websites and rel=”nofollow”.

Think Visibility, more than SEO

Think Visibility wasn’t all about SEO, Chris Garrett gave a Blogging Talk, Al Carlton and Kieron Donoghue talked Affiliate and Peter Cooper (The Ruby man) talked about… mmm not sure actually, though I remember Hitler seemed to pop up a lot!

Hot Topics

Link Buying

Link Buying seemed to pop up in conversation a lot. Pro’s and con’s were batted end to end and a clear divide seemed to emerge as to if you should/shouldn’t buy links.

Google Products

Dave Naylor, of Bronco Internet, illustrated how Google Products was still an unexploited part of Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

Silver-bullet websites

Very interesting learning about silver-bullet websites in SEO, what they are, how some webmasters are unaware they have one of their own and how some SEOers use them at times to bring down their competitors… real dirty stuff. I was also amazed to learn that one of the national newspaper sites was indeed a silver-bullet website, and getting a link from them could indeed destroy your ranking position. I shall digress away and not reveal which one it is

Reputation Management

Tom Critchlow, from Distilled, gave a great talk on Reputation Management.

Other

MSN vs Google Adwords
Brand name targeted PPC for quick gain affiliate revenue
Link Juice, explained by Tim Nash with 4 orange holey buckets and some water.
Page Rank (PR), distributing the weight of the high PR domains and pages for maximum gain
General SEO myths quashed
Lots more

#drinksvisibility

I know some of the speakers personally and managed to blag an invite to the speakers party the night before the event. After a barrel of ponk, a few dodgy pool hussels and some funny banter, we all fell into the hotel a good hour or two after midnight.

The next Think Visibility

All in all this mini SEO conference is well worth attending, with the next Think Visibility conference planned for September. A special thanks to Dom for organising it.

Did you attend? Which talks did you enjoy the most? What did you get out of it?

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“Comic Sans” Virus (CSV) outbreak infects millions of websites worldwide

Gary Hartley — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:27:55 +0000

In the early hours of Sunday, 22nd February 2009, a savage virus called ‘CSV’ began to infect millions of websites worldwide.

Originating from an unknown source in the UK at around 2am GMT, The “Comic Sans” Virus ‘CSV’ started corrupting the CSS files of websites through a server loophole, leaving them defaced with the “Comic Sans” typeface.

By 9am GMT, an estimated 10 million websites were infected with ‘CSV’, by which time the suspected ‘loophole’ in the servers configuration, at the originating London Exchange center, was plugged.

By 9:31am GMT, over 5 million websites were returned to their original state, leaving the rest still infected with ‘CSV’.

A patch download has been created to remedy any websites still infected. This patch can be downloaded at the bottom of this article.

Evidence of infection

Apple

Estimated infection time: 3 hours

Microsoft

Estimated infection time: 6 hours

UK newspapers

Times Online

Estimated infection time: 1 hour

Telegraph

Estimated infection time: 2 hours

Friends

Chrisg (Chris Garrett)

Estimated infection time: 15 minutes

Bronco (Dave Naylor)

Estimated infection time: still infected

Blog Storm (Patrick Altoft)

Estimated infection time: still infected

Reaction

Dave Naylor from Bronco: “I woke up to the news that the CSV infected our main website. After a few moments of deliberation, we decided to take action, much against the wishes of my wife who actually liked the change.”

Mogens Elsberg from Microsoft: “I see this little f***** has come back to bite us in the a**! Maybe we should have scrapped VINCENT CONNARE’s 1995 font for a less volatile alternate. Thanks for the heads up Frog”

John Smith, Chief Executive of BBC worldwide: “We think the British public will welcome the change, we may revert the fix in the next couple of days.”

The Patch

If your website seems to have been infected by the CSV you can manually patch your website by downloading the file below:

CSV patch 1.21, Multi-OS compatible: CSV patch.jpg

Frog of the Antarctic

Gary Hartley — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:43:54 +0000

See the dedication Frog has to his job and his clients after he abandoned his car 2 miles away from work and battled through 6 inches of snow in a gale for 30 minutes to get to work.

Hmm snow! Best defrost the car

A shot from the car

We abandoned the car and trekked along The Stray

Poor Zoe

Harrogate FC

Gridlock on Wetherby road

A car loses control and mounts a verge

Arrived, just one in I see

Work? Nah, snowman? Yes indeedy

The Antarctic trek to work, with soggy feet and a cold red nose I was glad to make it. Gradually half the team got in one by one, the other half quite sensibly stayed at home.

Other shots from friends from today

David Naylor

Patrick Altoft