2010

Dec

2010

Experiment – How Twitter Links Effect Search Engine Ranking

Last week both Google and Microsoft confirmed that they do in fact take in to consideration social media links (links within Facebook and Twitter) in their ranking algorithms.

I thought it would be interesting to try a little albeit slightly selfish experiment to see if I can gather some data to support what both search engines have confirmed. This is an informal experiment that will both help start to answer the questions these changes have brought and at the same time promote my wonderful wife’s website.

Below is a pre-crafted tweet with Keywords built in to the structure of the tweet, simply click the share button below to participate in the experiment.

I will be tracking the results with topsy.com and will publish a findings post once the experiment has concluded and I have had time to correlate the date.

I need your help!

If tweeting or linking is not your thing what are you doing reading an SEO blog?

Full Disclosure / Disclaimer – Participating in this experiment will promote a site that is owned by my wife, I do not want to hear from people that I was performing a selfish experiment. Though I fully believe the results will be useful to all SEO’s out there.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: Search Engine Optimization

Nov

2010

1 Comment

Hacking With Copier Machines

Think your identity is safe because you take all the necessary measures to protect yourself? Think again!!

Filed Under: Security

Sep

2010

1 Comment

Google Instant Expands – Adds Keyboard Navigation

Google Instant is expanding. The company has just announced new features and wider availability of the search-as-you-type feature.

Let’s start with the latter; Google says Instant is expanding in two ways:

Google Instant On Vertical Search Properties: In addition to being available on Google.com searches, Instant Search is now functioning on “many” of the vertical search options in Google’s left navigation column, like Videos, News, and Blogs.

Google Instant In New Countries: Instant Search is now available to signed-in users in 12 new countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine.

Finally, when using Google Instant, there are new keyboard navigation options. You can use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to navigate through the search suggestions (pretty sure that’s always been the case) and through the search results, too. This video shows how it works.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization

Sep

2010

3 Comments

Twitter Hacked – onMouseover Bug

XSS (Cross Site Scripting) vulnerability hits twitter.com.

The flaw used simple JavaScript function to call onMouseOver which created an event when the mouse is passed over an area of text. The user was then redirected to a third party site without the users consent.

Twitter’s @safety account tweeted Tuesday morning, “We’ve identified and are patching a XSS attack; as always, please message @safety if you have info regarding such an exploit.”

As of 10:00AM EST twitter issued this statement “This should now be fully patched and is no longer exploitable.”

Mashable estimates that the security flaw “has been widely exploited on thousands of Twitter accounts.” TechCrunch reports the onMouseover exploit may have spread to as many as 40,000 tweets in just 10 minutes.

Have you seen it? How has it affected you? Let us know below.

Filed Under: Security Tagged With: security, twitter

Sep

2010

1 Comment

Stack-based buffer overflow – Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.3.4

A Stack-based buffer overflow in CoolType.dll in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.3.4 and earlier allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (application crash) via a PDF document with a long field in a Smart Independent Glyphlets (SING) table in a TTF font.

This still unpatched vulnerability is actively being exploited in the wild. Exploits do not require JavaScript to be enabled within Adobe Reader and do not require write access to any directory. Confirmed exploits against Adobe Reader 9.1.0, 9.3.0, 9.3.4 running on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 have been reported.

Here is the exploit code in the PDF that’s circulating in the wild: