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.

Smoke Rise Park is a lovely 10-acre park on Hugh Howell Road. It contains no concrete or asphalt. Instead, it consists of winding, mulched trails, wooden bridges/boardwalks, and wooden benches and trash receptacles.

Mason Mill Park is a 111-acre park on McConnell Drive in Decatur. Recent master plan construction installed what looks like massive amounts of asphalt and concrete, sod, and lollipop trees.

Which is the model for Henderson Park?

Both Henderson Park and Smoke Rise Park are in Commissioner Elaine Boyer’s district, but only one is in her neighborhood. Guess which?

SMOKE RISE PARK

In the January 2008 issue of Smoke Signal, Commissioner Elaine Boyer
announced funding for what would become Smoke Rise Park: “thanks to more than $700,000 I was able to obtain for the Smoke Rise community for two green space acquisitions and the development of the Silver Hill Loop trail to better connect the community. The passive parks and the pathways should become the focal point of our community… The funds are being appropriated from the county park bond referendum… green space along Hugh Howell Road (about 10 acres)… Tentative plans are for the Hugh Howell green space to include mulched trails, bridges, benches and lighting… I hope to see each completed sometime in 2008 so we can all spend more time outdoors in out own community without having to cross the highway to visit Stone Mountain Park.”
(Smoke Signal, Volume 40, Issue 10, January, 2008, page 7, Commissioner’s Corner, “A Good Way to Start the Year- Smoke Rise Will Get New Trails, And New Green Space,” http://www.smokerise.org/downloads/SmokeSignal0108.pdf)

SMOKE RISE PARK PHOTOS

Entrance to Smoke Rise Park on Hugh Howell

Wooden bridge at Smoke Rise Park

Wooden benches and trash receptacle at Smoke Rise Park

Mulched Paths and Wooden Bridges at Smoke Rise Park

MASON MILL PARK

Changes at Mason Mill Park are the result of master planning by the Parks department. Like the master plan for Henderson Park, the process involves a series of public input meetings.

According to the public meeting minutes, which are posted on the Parks department’s web site (http://www.co.dekalb.ga.us/parks/pr-mason-mill-park.html), the public said it wanted less parking not more.

It also said it wanted to protect existing trees and preserve the natural quality of the park, “i.e., not highly developed (http://www.co.dekalb.ga.us/parks/pdf/MEETINGMINUTES1stPublicMeeting.pdf).

Playground at Mason Mill Park

Relocated Community Garden at Mason Mill Park (mostly concrete?)

Concrete picnic areas at Mason Mill Park

Mason Mill Park Parking

Asphalt parking lot at Mason Mill Park

And still more parking at Mason Mill Park

More parking space at Mason Mill Park

WHICH MODEL FOR HENDERSON PARK?

The price tag for the current phase of Henderson Park master plan construction is $380K, which Boyer says “should be considered as the ground work for the entire project and the other elements of the project will have to happen in the future once additional funding is available”
(see http://www.hendersonparkgarden.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Boyer-response-040411.pdf).

The current phase will deliver a hard-surface driveway, parking lot, and trails as well as “a picnic shelter, picnic tables, grills, and receptacles, etc.”

The price tag includes the laying of sod in the playground area, but no playground equipment. Also unfunded for this phase are a restroom, overlook, expanded soccer parking, sidewalk, and soft-surface trails. It is unknown when funds will become available for future phases.

Which model do we want for our park – the preserved natural beauty of Smoke Rise Park or the concrete and asphalt of Mason Mill Park?

- Jack

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.

In case you have been hiding under a rock, Google Instant refers to the update Google recently made in how they deliver search results. Several months ago, Google began “suggesting” queries as the user typed them. Google Instant took that a step further by not only suggesting queries but updating search results as the user typed.

Have you seen anything change yet? I’m curious. I haven’t. There are several companies that have tried to measure the impact of Instant on click-through rates and SEO traffic. It seems that the single consistent finding is that sites in position #9 and #10 are getting more clicks. Otherwise, nothing has changed.

Google Instant helps people clarify their queries faster. Relevant websites still show up for related queries. Those “relevant” websites likely have good quality content, have solved their accessibility issues, have keyword rich title tags and probably have a few pertinent websites linking to them. Oh, those are all SEO things. Apparently the fundamentals still apply.

Website findability is certainly evolving. People find their way to websites via many more avenues than just Google alone. But the golden rule still applies: “Content is King”. Your website has to be relevant to people or it will get ignored. Google may make many updates in the future but the changes to their search results seem to be focused more and more on ridding their index of spam. And that won’t happen in an instant.

The no follow tag was created so that comment spam and a whole host of link-dropping activities could be minimized in terms of how those links affected search rankings. People were building scripts to comment in blog posts and those comments were full of links that passed PageRank. Google hates that kind of stuff so they pushed the no follow attribute and the world signed on.

So, the no follow attribute was created to combat spam and indicate that links to a website are not necessarily trusted.

Google likes trust.

A lot of people got wise to the fact that putting no follow tags on internal pages condensed the flow of pageRank to pages that were critical to their rankings. This was a flaw in the Google algorithm that was addressed. In the meantime, some SEOs were telling their clients to add no follow tags to their “about us” pages and “privacy” pages. For a time it worked. But to me, adding a no follow tag to an “about us” page told search engines that our about page could not be trusted.

Google likes trust.

So yesterday Matt Cutts posted a video explaining that adding no follow to internal hyperlinks was really just a bad idea. Thanks Matt. I have argued that point many times. Here’s the video:

As I stated a few posts back, Google makes duplicate content for me, Google is looking inside Javascript functions to determine if there are additional URLs and content that they could crawl and add to their index. Their goal, after all, is organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. But I wonder if their quest to crawl content previously obscured by Javascript has inadvertently provided a loop hole for people who buy and sell links.

I recently encountered a hyperlink that was composed like, a href=http://www.mywebsite.com rel=”nofollow” onclick=window.open(this.href);return false;>my keyword <. As you can see, the initial hyperlink has a nofollow attribute and Google would thereby cut off pageRank flow to the destination page. However, since Google crawls simple Javascript functions such as the window.open function, will the initial "nofollow" be added to the URL which is derived from the Javascript?

I think not. But I shall test. I recently did a little work to make my vet's site accessible and their pet grooming page has yet to be crawled by Google. (See that, I just added this nice little Javascript function to the “pet grooming” link). So this is my little test. I will be looking to see if Google picks up the new grooming page and whether the link to that page from this blog shows up in GWT. Here goes….

(update April 21) – Google immediately crawled this blog post and ranked the post in SERPs. However, it DID NOT follow the JS link to the Tucker Vet’s grooming page. It looks like links in JS that are tagged with rel=nofollow are correctly read and observed by Google!