Hacking canonicals, paraphrase indexing and more – The Monday May 16th Roundup

Big week in the tech world with Seminars for Success having their first Vancouver seminar, and one upcoming for Victoria in a few weeks. Also a big reveal about Facebook (rather ironically) hiring a marketing firm to produce some bad press surrounding Google’s data privacy. I just can’t make this stuff up, it’s too good.

This week we have new hacker tricks with the canonical tag, paraphrase based indexing, International SEO, and more…

Create

Apparently there’s a new hacking goal for black hat SEOs that’s going around. Now hackers are breaking onto pages and setting the canonical tag to point to other, spammy pages. Since it doesnt have an obvious effect on the page in question, it’s hard to notice. However, from what I understand, the canonical tag doesn’t *really* direct anything. It’s more of a suggestion than a device for moving linkjuice around, because if it did have a hard effect it would be too easy to abuse.

Attract

SEO By the Sea keeps being awesome. This time with an analysis of a few Google patents describing how one might produce methods for paraphrase based indexing. Read part 1 here, and part 2 here.
Well here’s a familiar subject: Get Elastic has an interview with Michael Bonfils on international SEO strategies for global ecommerce websites. If you’ve been following our posts/webinars on international SEO, this nicely complements it.

Analyze

Getting Meta, the Google Analytics blog has an overview of overview reports. I dont know if people actually need this (as the overviews are pretty basic) but it does show a few of the cooler new features that GA V5 Reports have.
This look familiar? Tech Tutkiun has an explanation of Google Analytics cookies. I think he does it a little better than I did, in truth.

Optimize

UXMatters is rocking the roundup this week with two UX articles. First, how the power of free and scarcity influence decision making.
Next up how to design questions for complex forms, based on a study of census envelopes.

Kent Clark

Some have compared him to the Dalai Lama, others to Kublai Kahn. When he isn't teaching third world children how to purify water with nothing more than a plastic bottle and a garden hose, he is creating mad waves for surfers off the west coast with little more than a paddle. Some say there is a boat involved, others that he walks on water. Little is known about his background. he appeared from nowhere 15 years ago and claims heritage from a land with neither want not need. He makes little comment, stating only that it was a pretty cool place. Fire does not burn him, cold does not hurt him. Words could... but they don't. When he passes, pedals fall off branches. When he speaks, hair tugs at skin, pulling just slightly in his direction. He does not sleep but he does dream. He has muscled his way into the lives of the famous and whispered his way into their hearts. And in the wee hours he plays oboe softly, as if to sooth the night to sleep.