Google has been obscuring organic referral data for several weeks now. And, contrary to the initial assessment of having an impact on a “very low percentage” of users, it looks to be a quite sizable chunk of data that has evaporated into the depths of the interwebs.

Thanks Google, I will now guess how people got to my site.

Google says that they are hiding this data for privacy reasons. Right, I get it. Removing referral data for 8-15% of Google queries keeps some potentially vulnerable keywords safe from the targeting and exposure practices of marketing teams. Privacy is privacy.

Since the advancement of this keyword safety drive, I have looked for other ways to uncover the not-provided referral data. I would still like to understand the behavior of site visitors, regardless of their logged-in status. But how?

Tea leaves, of course.

Use advanced tea leaves to understand organic keywords

Personally, I prefer the Special Gunpowder brand of tea. I discovered this tea while spending time in West Africa and it holds a dear place in my heart.

The Special Gunpowder tea leaves are delicately rolled up into little balls. When hot water is added, the leaves unravel to deliver an intense flavor and, if you’re lucky, the secret to your organic keyword referral data.

In the Senegalese tradition, I love 3 good rounds of carefully prepared tea. Even more, I love myself some safe Internet!

Special Gunpowder Tea has a variety of uses

Raters are people who actually qualify changes so that the algorithm can be tweaked effectively. There are rumors that there are some 10,000 raters worldwide that help Google aggregate data and test search results, but I haven’t confirmed that number.

I recently noticed the change Google made to how they render results around misspellings. This video gives some insight into the thought processes that took place for making the change to the “did you mean” link.

I recently visited Commisioner Boyer’s website where she boasts of being a “crusader”, “fiscal conservative” and “one who seeks to get government out of the way of the consumer, the businessman, the entrepreneur.” Good enough. From those statements it would seem reasonable for her to take up the cause to save money by getting out of the way of residents who want to conserve the beauty of the green space of Henderson Park. Problem solved.

Hold on, residents weren’t in that list, just businessmen and entrepreneurs. Dang.

Maybe I should go back and read some more…

Ok, I’m back. That was refreshing! Further reading of her website states “Commissioner Boyer believes county government should be run like a business.” Ok, crap. Well, that’s certainly one approach. But let’s take it at face value.

If Dekalb County is a “business”, then who are the customers? The residents must be the customers, right? If Dekalb County is the business and the residents are customers, should there not be accountability? When hundreds of people petition her office and beg to be heard, should they not be, what’s the word here…acknowledged?

Ignoring customers is just bad business. Where, exactly, is Donald Trump when we need him?

So if businessmen are Commissioner Boyer’s main interest, are there businesses that are vying for the rights to lay concrete over the wishes of Tucker residents? Does Elaine Boyer see her role as one to make it easier for businesses to make money from the master plan? Has the reworking of the Henderson Park master plan been developed to benefit the businessmen and the entrepreneur only? It certainly seems to be the case.

Most sarcasm aside, I do want to point out that I am particularly peeved because I attended several meetings with Dekalb County (along with dozens, if not hundreds, of other residents) where we got to vote, make changes, prioritize projects and otherwise be led to believe that our opinions, and our votes, actually mattered. To now be told that these meetings and our input was “conceptual” in nature is just insulting.

It should be abundantly clear that Tucker residents love their community and wish for it to grow responsibly. And the last time I checked, the “customer is always right.” If Commissioner Boyer wants to run a business here, then It’s time for her to start listening and honor her commitment to the residents of Tucker, and not just a few select businesses.

When I submitted the room request, I did not submit a credit card as there was no place to do so. I was sent an auto-generated email that said that my room was “not guaranteed” and would not be honored unless I called and put a credit card on file. So when my life plans changed and I could not honor the reservation, I never worried because I wasn’t officially registered anyway.

I received lots of calls from my friends this weekend, “We miss you!”, “We wish you were here!”, etc. It was great to hear from them and I was a bit bummed that I could not make the trip and attend the wedding.

And then today (Monday), I got a call from the hotel management. Derek Wall, the hotel manager called me on my cell phone and asked me why I did not honor my reservation. I couldn’t even answer him. He went on and on about how rude it was for me to not show up and that I should have common courtesy, yadda yadda. I finally broke in and let him know that if he was calling me for money – that wasn’t going to happen.

That’s when he really flipped out. Derek told me he didn’t like my attitude and that I needed to understand that when I make a commitment that I needed to honor that commitment….click.

I hung up. Shocked. A hotel manager from Floyd Virginia is going to call me up and chew me out first thing Monday morning? Really? And over what?

Derek called right back and I didn’t answer so he left me a long voice mail:
“John, this is Derek Wall calling from Hotel Floyd. I don’t appreciate you calling and hanging up the phone on me (he called me)….but I do like to discuss these issues because you know, not showing up to a reservation, you can sit here and put the blame on the hotel but you made the reservation that should have sent you a conservation email….I will search for that confirmation email and show you what it says at the very top of that email, uh, leaving a credit card is customary, ah, if I had to call every person that forgot to leave a credit card (I didn’t forget, not website functionality) it, it’s hard for me to do that…I have a limited staff here, I’m not a corporation, ah, so you can sit here and lecture me and put the blame on us but it was you at fault because you did not show up….you did make a reservation, you are obligated to show up….”

He went on for a good while about how I should have called him and that it is my fault, not the hotel’s fault, that he is all worked up and angry.

My question is this: Why did they not have time to call me before the event to confirm my registration but they had lots of time after the event to call and chew me out? I don’t get it. And who calls to complain that someone did not honor a reservation? Do restaurants to this? Do other hotels do this? Is this just Hotel Floyd?

Also, why did Hotel Floyd have all the bandwidth to send me advertisements over the last few months but didn’t have the bandwidth to confirm a reservation?

So, thinking about staying in Floyd, VA for Floyd Fest or some other cool festival? I understand Hotel Floyd is a decent place to stay. But think long and hard before you make a reservation. I have never met the management personally but from the hostile emails and phone calls, they seem a little unstable.

Luckily, people booed and that model never went forward.

So now when Yahoo! needs a some more cash, they don’t bother with silly announcements that could get booed. They just get right down to charging their customers. The fine print is in place, it’s all legal, so it must be all good. Oh, how I miss the corporate life and the wonderful decisions that come from a spreadsheet.

There is a reason I don’t advertise with Yahoo!. And I’m really glad I don’t. Because if I were a Yahoo! advertiser, it is likely that they would have already “optimized” my account, like they just did for so many unwitting other accounts, by adding keywords and distribution that results in more exposure, more clicks and higher costs with a complete disregard to relevance and transparency.

The fact that things are technically “legal” doesn’t make them right. There’s no wonder that Yahoo! continues to come up short in their quest to be the leader in online search. They just don’t seem to understand that customers are actually people.

PrWeb definitely positions itself as the premium service. They charge $200 per release, which is certainly premium and much more than the other services. They do offer a lot of features and have positioned themselves as the authority.

But when I used them to put out a press release regarding the launch of our new website, the release was immediately scraped by PR-USA, a service out of Bulgaria that specializes in scraping (stealing) content and attributing it to themselves. And they are good at scraping (effective, but they suck). Their scraped press release stole the show on Google and the PRweb release was nowhere to be found.

No one has control over Google and I didn’t expect PRweb to flick a switch and make the scraper site go away. But I did talk to their customer service team to raise the issue, especially since one of the main points of the release was “Made in the USA.” A press release from Bulgaria doesn’t exactly help.

PrWeb customer service was apologetic and very nice and suggested I put in a ticket with their product management team to elevate the concern. So I did. The response back was amazing. The product management team didn’t even acknowledge the problem and gave me a bit of a sarcastic reply. Hmmm…a defensive product management team that won’t admit mistakes…sounds familiar.

Here’s part of Chris’ reply from PrWeb:

Again, if your goal is to get your release far and wide on the Internet, then other organizations finding your press release and reposting it is a good practice for you. It just gives you more exposure. If for whatever reason that is not your goal, then perhaps you may want to reconsider posting them on the World Wide Web.

He said, “World Wide Web”.

Gee, thanks Chris. As a seasoned snarkmaster myself, I wasn’t amused. I ended up calling Chris “smarty pants” in my reply and that’s when the management stepped in and offered a sincere reply to my original concerns (i.e. – they’re getting scraped and they don’t like it). Perhaps I will use PRweb again in the future, but for now I can’t justify the expense. Just because something costs more doesn’t mean it comes with higher quality.

But when I come home, inevitably, I have a connection problem. The solution? Like all things Microsoft, a reboot.

I don’t just reboot once. The process is a 3 reboot cycle. Lately, it has taken 4 reboots.

Thanks Microsoft. I could have been sitting in traffic and enjoying the sunshine.

Cell phone numbers going public tomorrow

REMINDER….all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies tomorrow and you will start to receive sale calls.

….YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS

Well, according to Snopes, that claim is false. Specifically, it still remains illegal for auto-dialers to call cell phones. There is a drive to have a national cell phone directory service, but it is by opt-in only. Do nothing and you won’t be listed.

Having said that, you can still go to 888-382-1222 to get on the national “Do Not Call” Registry. You can also file complaints there or at donotcall.gov. That should take care of the marketers, or at least most of them. But if you expect to have private cell phone conversations, that’s a different story.

But I couldn’t help but notice the charge. Apparently the man,

filed false and illegal documents to the County Clerk’s office. The taxes did not include his purchase of a brand new boat and truck. Due to this, he failed to pay a total of $2,615.95 of sales tax that was to be paid to the state of Tennessee at the time of the purchases.

So he’s gonna spend a couple of years in jail possibly. Certainly everyone should pay their taxes and tax evaders should be brought inline. But I’m curious why certain people seem exempt from the same crime. For instance, I came across this article that explains how a top contractor for the Defense department has avoided paying ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars in taxes since 2002. Apparently, setting up an office in the Caymen islands and not paying taxes saves money for the Defense department, and that’s ok.

Meanwhile, John P, my co-top-10 Googlee, is gonna spend some time behind bars. And I’m going to be sure and pay my taxes. The offshore companies in the Caymen islands? Looks like they will continue to employ Americans, get government contracts and somehow help the Defense department by having a higher profit margin. We might as well be paying Exxon to charge us higher gas prices.