Posted by great scott!Hey Gang,This week, Rand discusses how search engines are using historical linking and reference patterns to help determine, and reward, primary source material in blog and news searches.  Could this bring implications in keyword searches? Will the time come that link volume isn't a key factor, but rather the engines place a stronger emphasis on where and when a story or trend breaks? Check it out and weigh-in with your thoughts on what may one day be called the Bloodhound aspect of the algorithm.Technorati TagsSEOmoz, SEO, Rand Fishkin, Google, Canonical, Blog, News, Whiteboard Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by JaneCoplandIn a couple of hours, I'll leave for Heathrow after attending the inaugural SMX Londonand speaking on my first session, Linkbait and Viral Marketing. And only twelve hours after I'd finally acclimatised to the eight-hour time difference between Western Europe and the U.S.'s West Coast. That's a tough one to get used to. I did everything in my power to stay awake upon arriving in London, including drinking coffee with Gillian and swimming in the Hilton Metropole's rather neat pool; however, I lasted until 6pm and slept for twelve straight hours.Conferences are different when you know you're going to speak, especially for the first time. You watch presenters in a different way, figuring out what makes them good speakers and what looks bad from the audience. I decided quickly that "chatting" with the crowd seems to be the way to go. People who appeared to be having a friendly discussion with their audience generally came across very well.My first day in England, after the twelve hour sleep that made little difference to my internal confusion about what time it was, included a trip to Altogether Digital's offices to practice my presentation with fellow panelist, Ciarán Norris. Of course, we promptly decided that our presentations were wonderful, but not before I made Ciarán take me to Soho's best fish and chip shop for lunch. There are few meals better than genuine fish and chips!I missed two sessions while I was out feeding my inner fat person and practicing for the next day's session. Upon returning to the hotel, I ran into Lisa Ditlefsenwho was outside the front entrance, nursing a post-speech cigarette. We went back down to the conference halls to catch Cutting Edge Linking Tactics, where Ken McGaffinwas already speaking. Sorry about sneaking around the back of the room, Ken!Some highlights from the session? Ken spoke about looking out for emerging markets and establishing your position early, pre-market saturation. He also pointed out the importance of figuring out whether or not the market really exists, suggesting it best to plan twelve months in advance instead of flying by the seat of your pants. Well. He put it a little better than that. My conference notes tend to translate things into "Jane Speak," which is sometimes a little more colourful.Dixon Jonestook the stage after Ken, expressing the idea that linking is even more valuable nowadays than it was a few years ago. Getting into Google and being indexed, he said, is the easy part. Google is very good at that; it's the links that are harder to find, maintain, and have credited in your favor. Dixon explained the difference in quality traffic certain types of content and links will attract to a website. Content and sites that are easy to develop and come with a slew of bad links will attract low-quality traffic.After a brief discussion about the joys of exploiting the Images Google bomb, Dixon spoke briefly about internal linking: many sites have made sure to link their pages in someway, but rarely do we see them linking in a way that breaks a site down into categories and makes sure the links actually relate to each other, especially in the "eyes" of a search engine.Rob Kerry, aka evilgreenmonkey, took the stage after Dixon. After the recent directory and paid link crisisthing that I'm not going to get into any more, Rob talked about the values of mature, authoritative directories that come with strict moderation. He cited BOTW, DMOZ, the Yahoo Directory, etc., and directories that have a real value. Rob also covered some of the bad, strange, and ugly ideas people seem to get when linkbuilding, such as creating "Made for Search Engine" websites and noting "premium links." The ugly tactics included faking PageRank by buying old domains (and thus charging for links from the faked PR sites), promoting link exchanges, and accepting all sites' links.Amusing us with stories of creating fake personaein order to ask for links (I guess being evil, green, and a monkey doesn't do you any favors when digging for link juice), Rob talked about the footprints paid link schemes leave, how "Sponsored Links" and links.html pages are the kiss of death, and how you're perfectly entitled to be stubborn about the placement of your links. During Q&A, Rob elaborated on the "footprints," showing how many link brokers use the same CSS styling on all links so that no matter where they are, the links all look the same.Another Q&A gem? The panel agreed that old school PR agencies can be a fantastic source of links, as they often have contacts within the BBC, CNN, and other news networks. Even if your link is only included on one of these networks' websites once or twice a year, those links are like gold.The next more entertaining session of the day included Dave Naylor, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Kristjan Mar Hauksson, and Dixon, who were meant to be discussing What's New with the Algorithms, but spent their hour generally entertaining the crowd, picking on Google, directing questions to Microsoft reps, and ignoring Yahoo. Upon being questioned as to where he'd like the SEO industry to be in five years, Dave decided he'd like to ask the crowd, "Who remembers Google, yeah? Hands up. No one? Ah, good."Later that night, Gillian, Dave, and I went to dinner with Nathan Buggiaand Mel Carsonfrom Microsoft. The five hours of sleep I managed to get that night wasn't so much due to staying out late (I was home by midnight, Rand!), but was because of being wide awake at 5:15am and deciding to go swimming again. Gosh, how I love hotels with swimming pools. Gillian's session, Search Marketing for Financial Services, took place at 9am and was interrupted by Rebecca, who'd just returned home from bar trivia in Seattle and wanted to chat on Gtalk. I told her that I was insanely busy and to go away. [Note from Rebecca:You're such a liar, Jane. I got a real-time update of Gillian's presentation from you, and Ciarán can attest to that!]I'd like to say that, being a naturally gifted public speaker with nerves of steel, I didn't practice my presentation at all before I gave it, but I actually went through it a couple of times in my room, presenting it to my own reflection and to the pictures on the wall behind my head. I'm glad I did. It helped a lot once I got down to the conference hall.For a first time speaker, the lighting situation was wonderful. The bright lights meant that I couldn't really see the audience at all. Or maybe I just have crappier eyesight than I like to imagine, but I couldn't see any of you, sorry. I felt like I got a pretty good reaction from the audience, although I was trumped by Ciarán, who came armed with a video of a girl in a bra, playing the drums. No amount of screenshots can top that! Ciarán should really have tried to look less blurryI was a bit worried that Q&A would be littered with questions such as, "I have a site about [industry that's really boring]. What can I do for linkbait?" While I think I'm quite good at thinking up appropriate yet effective linkbait for [boring industry] sites, I knew it would be hard to think things up on the spot. However, we didn't get questions like that; the questions and comments were some of the best I've heard from a linkbait audience.I knew the adrenaline and lack-of-sleep crash was coming. You get all wound up about something like that - speaking for the first time - and then once it's over, you're pretty much done for. I went upstairs and slept for a couple of hours before Rob Kerry's awesome LondonSEOparty at the Harcourt Arms.Lisa Ditlefsen and I celebrate a conference well done!I had one extra day in London before flying home to the U.S. (in case you were interested, I've now left my hotel and this is being composed in a cafe at Heathrow...), so Lisa Ditlefsen took me out on Saturday for a tourist day in town. I couldn't very well have gone to England and not seen the Tower Bridge, the London Eye, the Tower of London, and Big Ben. That evening, Tom Critchlow and Duncan Morris from Distilledtook me out to a Scottish restaurant, where I ate haggis for the first time. My grandmother, born in Stirling, will be very pleased. I have to agree with Rebecca, Scott, Gillian, and everyone else who's ever tried haggis: it's delicious! Much like some sausages, you just have to not think about what it's made from!Don't we look pleased with having eaten haggisWhile I was In England, I came across plenty of fun oddities. The beer bottle opener in my room is mounted in the bathroom cabinet, next to the bathtub. It seems that the English like to party in style. Cab drivers can't be trusted to take you to where you want to go. After saying, "Hilton Metropole. London Hilton Metropole at 244 Edgware Road" twice, this guy apparently thought I said something completely different and took me two miles in the wrong direction. British immigration officials are much nicer than their American counterparts. After asking me why I was coming to England and when I'd be leaving again, the officer stamped my passport. I almost felt like asking, "Really? That's it?"If this reaches your Internets before I get home, it's because Heathrow's wireless network has kept me connected for long enough in order to post. To all you London SEO people: thanks so much for helping make this a fantastic trip. I'll see many of you at Pubcon... those of you who aren't coming to Vegas in December, I hope to see you again soon thereafter!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishToday marks the completion of our first ever external funding - $1.1million (sorry, no Shoemoney shothere). I wrote about this move twice before, asking in August for your feedback on whether to take venture capitaland in September about our decision to move forwardwith the deal. At that time, I also promised that we'd have a recap of our financials for the year-to-date, much as we did for 2006. Sadly, this will be the last time I'm able to share this much about the inner workings of SEOmoz this publicly. However, we're moving away from the traditional consulting model and thus our numbers are probably less relevant and interesting than, say, Jim Boykin's(just saying, Jim, if you feel like sharing, I'm sure the folks would appreciate it). And, in good news, talking with Michelle today (with the Seahawks game on pause), we will still be sharing lots of cool stats and keeping true to our moz-ethos post-investment. This means the sharing certainly isn't over, it just probably won't be this all-encompassing again (with regard to finances, that is. We'll still reveal way too much about everything else).Without further ado, here are our financials from January 2007 - November 16, 2007. Don't forget that these are estimates, not audited numbers and should be taken with a grain of "~."Current Status (pre funding):Cash in the Bank: $80,000 (not counting the investment, obviously)Full time Employees: 7 Contract Employees: 4 (and Mel should be full time in just a few short days) Interns: 1 (go Danny!) Clients Served in 2007: 16 Pitches Made in 2007: 8 (other clients were from pre-2007)Clients Referred to the Recommended List: 225 Clients Referred to the Marketplace: 20 (and it's only been live for 10 days!) Earnings from Referring Clients: $0.00 (we've never taken kickbacks and we never will)Having your fiancee call you the "golden boy of SEO": pricelessNumber of Premium Member Signups by Month:January - n/a February - 61March - 116April - 205May - 244June - 261July - 370August - 290September - 260October - 263November (16 days) - 152 (USA! USA!- MG; "I don't think our international readers will appreciate that" - Rand)Content Currently in SEOmoz Premium:10 SEO ToolsTerm TargetGeo-Targeting DetectionBacklink Anchor Text AnalysisPopular Searches ListJuicy Link FinderRank CheckerTerm ExtractorPage StrengthCrawl TestKeyword Difficulty<Burgundy> Are You a Monkey Quiz</Burgundy>646 Posts in the Q+A Knowledge Base4 Premium GuidesSocial Media Optimization StrategiesThe Illustrated Guide to Building a Search-Friendly WebsiteThe Professional's Keyword Research GuideThe Professional's Guide to Link Building125 Sources in the Link Directory13 Providers of Services in the Discount Store63 Entries of Strategies & Tactics in the Premium Tips List2007 Earnings:SEOmoz Premium Content: $401,187SEOmoz Seminar: $32,977 (123 paid attendees) New Clients: $187,000 Clients from pre-2007: $140,000 Total Earnings (YTD):$761,164Breakdown of Expenses (through Sept. only):45% - Salaries12.5% - Travel (oh those SMX shows)11% - Outsourcing 8% - Rent 5% - Utilities (incl. hosting & analytics) 5% - Events (SMX Seattle After-Party + SEOmoz Seminar) 5% - Marketing/Advertising4% - Miscellaneous (i.e., Pixie Stix. Lots of Pixie Stix)2% - Medical1.5% - Legal1% - Supplies, Hardware & SoftwareAdditional Points of Interest:Total Number of SEOmoz Members (free & premium): 53,439The New SEOmoz Marketplaceis rocking after only a week in operation - case in point:Number of Companiesin the Marketplace: 173Number of Job Postsin the Marketplace: 32Number of Resumesin the Marketplace: 34Number of People who've already emailed me because they got contracts from the Marketplace: 3Number of People who've already emailed me because they filled positions from the Marketplace: 2Outstanding Debt: $0 (woo hoo!) Rand's Total Personal Earnings (through November, including bonuses): $41,000 Rand's Single Largest Expenditure: An Engagement Ring(Best. Bullet point. Ever.)A few more notes on the investment and on SEOmoz's plans for the future:As I've mentioned in the past, the focus of the investment is to grow the premium content module by offering more tools, features and content. Stuff coming soon includes 7 hours of video footage from our training session here in Seattle (broken up into 7 modules), a complete redesign of premium (including visual graphics to accompany the tools), 3 new premium guides (on linkbait, legal issues in search, and blogging) and our super secret project, which has a beta launch just in time for Christmas. Stuff coming later (March and beyond) includes a few new tools, downloadable legal contracts & forms, rank tracking and smaller additions like comments in premium Q+A and tips, thumbs in the premium content sections, & literally hundreds of new ideas. At this time, the board of directors will include only myself, Michelle, & Gillian. Vanessa's plenty busy with a million other things. We're planning to have our first ever booth at SMX West in Santa Clara. Scott will be posting more on that in the future to help us solicit ideas of how to make it as fun and interactive as possible. We'll be growing to ~15 people over the next 6 months, and probably more after that, but we'll be staying right here in Seattle at the mozplex on Roosevelt Way for at least the next year, which means I still get to walk to work (yay!)Although the switch to premium content has made us less active in taking on clients, we're not planning to completely stop consulting work. This decision is primarily to make sure we never lose our edge or our ability to relate to the job of SEOs. However, we'll probably be taking on only 1-2 new clients every 2-3 months.As ever, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the incredibly gracious search community. This industry continues to attract not only an incredible level of talent, but a remarkable group ofopen, friendly, generous people and it's these qualities that make me proud to be counted among the ranks of search marketers. Hopefully, this information can serve to once again provide knowledge and value to others in the world of search marketing consultations & services.p.s. Anyone want to bet a million dollars that no fewer than at least one "respected" journalistic publication will make drastic errors when covering this information? No, seriously - we can bet that much now :) (Glad to see you are using your newfound resources wisely.)p.p.s. In anticipation of a few questions around the numbers, I figured I'd provide some background. If you love addition, you'll note that we've actually had 2222 signups for premium content, yet only have 1580 current members (I'm really bad at math. I think my brain just exploded). Some of those are obviously folks who sign up for only a month or 6-month stint, but our cancellation rate is still higher than we'd like.  However, when we actually studied these folks, we found, remarkably, that more than 50% of those who canceled their membership have renewed again with 4 months (obviously this only counts the months for which we have this data). You might also wonder why July was such a stellar month - that's when we raised the costof premium membership. Finally, the expenses numbers only ran through to September, so 3 current SEOmoz staffers aren't included (and thus the percentages are off a bit).UPDATE: Mystery Guest was feeling cheeky tonight, so she's added her comments to this post in burgundy.UPDATE FROM MYSTERY GUEST: This doesn't change things. I maintain my "I'm not posting anymore, dammit" stance. I just added comments to steal the computer from Rand in order to look at shoes.Technorati Tagsventure capital, seomoz, financials, funding, seo toolsDo you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishThis weekend, Mystery Guest, Vanessa, Todd& I all hopped a flight from Seatac up to Edmonton, Alberta at the request of our dear friend, Ken Jurina. Ken's companies, Top Draw& Epiarwere celebrating not only their combined 21 years in business, but their many clients and recent spate of successes. At 32, Ken's been able to achieve amazing things - I've written about Ken's companyhere on SEOmoz in the past, and their technological prowess, particularly in the realm of automating keyword and topical research, has grown impressively even since that time. You can get a small sense for some of the value Epiar's able to provide to clients (and its own properties) from their blog posts, including this recent one on Presidential Candidates and ROI.The party was themed Moulin Rouge, but black tie attire was requested, so all of us donned our finest:_Left:Ken Jurina, our gracious host, with Todd Friesen. Right:Vanessa & I in front of the sushi bar._Left:I give Ken's lovely wife, Kim, the traditional SEOmoz greeting. Right:Curtis Dueck, Bonnie & I dance in front of the 10-piece live band._Left:An oyster bar made of ice. Right:Mystery Guest findsme a hat._Left:The night's events were masterfully coordinated by Matthew Glass. Right:Yes, they even had pole dancers.Now, admittedly, flying up to Edmonton, while only a 90-minute hop, is still exceptionally extravagant for MG and I, but Ken simply wouldn't take no for an answer. I must say, despite the whirlwind trip, it was the best party I've ever attended, period. And, while this might look like a bit of dot-com boom era extravagance, Ken sourced a remarkable amount of the food, entertainment and decorations from local firms that he knows or works with (even some of the scantily-clad dancers were local med students). Besides which, Ken has built something exceptional with his two firms - international quality software and services withthe recognition of an organization 20X their size (together, Epiar & Top Draw have under 20 employees!) and I can't think of a better way to reward the people who've helped bring them to where they are. Ken's generosity is dwarfed only by his humility - if you see him at Pubcon, make sure to offer your congratulations.As Mystery Guest said after we returned to our hotel room, "There's nothing better than seeing someone so deserving have such great success." May the years ahead be as exciting as those behind you, Ken, and may your party invitations never cease :)And now, on to the week's roundup.Yes, Amazon's new Kindlemay be a bit ugly, but it (or a more beautifully skinned clone) is going to change the way we read. I actually want to order one right now, and I won't even buy an iPhone... Not to be missed - MadKastis a blog sharing widget that's actually remarkably usable. In the next-gen search space, Lijit is a cross between personalized search and social sharing that's got me thinking "Google acquisition."Darius shows off how online tech blogs played the telephone gamewith Nissan's color-changing paint. Is fact-checking really so difficult?166 comments and counting on what's surely one of Aaron Wall's most generous blog poststo date.Jon Mendez tests out Facebook adsand reports back with real numbers. And, speaking of Facebook, Rae has a ton of videos about the social sitethat I'm sure Rebecca and Jane will be digging through tomorrow.Andrew Goodman says the paid search recession is a farce. I agree - Steve Rubel just doesn't spend enough time in the space to have a solid grasp of when the ceilings on PPC value are reached. Andrew does.Andy Hagans has a killer list of valuable social media niche sitesto use for all your SMM campaigns.Ahmed at Performancing gives a good list of networking tips for non-US bloggers. Good stuff, and sorely needed.Get your site ready for the holidays with these three posts:Grokdotcom - Screencast: Guarantee Holiday SalesIan Lurie - 8 Ways to Get Ready for Cyber MondayMarketing Pilgrim - 8 Good Holiday Season Statistics for Internet RetailersAs always, if you've got other news, feel free to link in the comments.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishBiased manipulation runs wild on Wikipedia, and the extent to which it influences the pages of that site will probably never be known. In the field of SEO, where every link counts, Wikipedia's reference links at the bottom of articles and their external links in the body text of articles were once considered search engine ranking gold. Early this year, Wikipedia moved to institute nofollowon all outbound links, and many presumed the controversy would die there. It hasn't.I think the best way I can illustrate this massive problem is to attack the most common questions that come up around Wiki-hacking (yes, I'm inventing a moniker so I don't have to say "editing Wikipedia from a biased perspective in inaccurate, misleading or mis-representational ways" every time). Those who frequent Wikipedia would probably consider these edits to be "vandalism," but that's a very inaccurate representation of the actions that are actually happening. Vandalism refers to intentional destruction or damage of property - in the offline world, think graffiti or bricks through a window. These Wikipedia edits are, primarily, intended never to be detected by other Wikipedia editors or the outside world - a better analogy might be the subtle manipulation of a news report to slant in favor of a political party or candidate.Some major questions and issues:Why Edit Wikipedia Pages if There's No Link Juice?Reputation Management- if Wikipedia has bad things to say about a topic, there will almost certainly be someone who wishes to see that information removed. Link Traffic- Wikipedia articles, due to their phenomenal overrepresentation in search engines, can drive a remarkable amount of traffic, so many wiki-hacks are simply attempts to boost click-throughs Promotion- If you were a cellphone company, you might seriously consider editing the Wiki article on cellphone retailers, possibly adding a link to a list of "highest rated" stores by consumers according to a bogus study you host on your site (or another site) and then copying that list in short-format on the Wikipedia entry. Other promotional tactics are less obvious, but often more difficult to identify. And, yes, that story is a modified version of a true instance of Wiki-promotion. To Spite- If your competitor is ranking ahead of you on Google, or kicking you around in sales, you might find that Wikipedia is an excellent place to create a page on their company and detail the long list of terrible misdeeds they've committed. What's great (or horrible) about this practice is that generally, they'll be the ones who later come in and look like spammers for erasing the content or trying to have it removed, which actually helps to bolster the veracity of information in the eyes of other editors or administrators. It's a dirty but highly effective tactic to leverage against an opponent. I've even heard a story about using this technique for blackmailing the company referenced in the negative article, and pretending to "switch sides" in the editorial debate on the talk page once the money had been paid (it's DMOZ all over again!). For Link Juice- Wait, I thought there was no link juice on Wikipedia... Well, not directly. But, Wikipedia is such a reference resource that if your site earns links on popular pages, you'll find that those links find their way into forums, blog posts, articles, and journalistic publications more often than not. This is probably one of the most clever ways to use Wikipedia, because you'll need to link to something worthy of being spread, anyway, which probably means that even a heavy-handed Wiki-editor won't remove it, as it's typically relevant enough and interesting enough to belong there. One might even argue that this isn't Wiki-Hacking at all (perhaps it's the linkbait of Wikipedia?). To Earn Credit- The Wikipedia hierarchy rewards frequent, positive edits, and for many Wiki-hackers this is a great way to build up a solid, respectable-looking profile and potentially even be rewarded with administrator status. Wiki-Jacking- Since I've written about this topic previously, I won't cover it again in-depth. How Do Malicious Edits Happen?Anonymously- As of now, users can still make edits anonymously without logging in. Granted, Wikipedia will record your IP address, but you don't have to provide any personal information (not even fake stuff). Through Proxies - When one anonymous account just won't do, or you don't want the anonymous account to have any connection to your other account(s), using a proxy IP address lets you connect through to Wikipedia largely undetected (so long as the proxy provides solid anonymity). Through Trusted Accounts- For the more experienced Wiki-Hackers, a trusted account is a must have. Trusted accounts that make dozens of edits each day are much less likely to be accused of manipulation or have their content modified by another editor, even if complaints arise. Via Multiple Accounts with History- The savviest of Wiki-Hackers I've talked to runs more than a dozen unique, trusted accounts with positive history, and can use these What are Some of the Best/Worst Stories I've Heard?The Sock Puppet Betrayer- This is second-hand, so the details might be fuzzy, but the basic approach was sheer genius. Basically, this Wiki-Hacker created several accounts on different IPs, then vandalized a number of pages, mostly small and under-the-radar, appearing to look like a competitor (adding links, references, promotional content, etc). He then "investigated" these pages through his trusted account, "found" the "spammers," removed their content, and was praised by some other community editors. Later, he used the newfound trust to create subtle, but effective references for his own client. The Account Buyer- Supposedly, this fellow has been tracking down Wikipedia editors and offering to buy their account user names and passwords for the "trust" they've earned. According to him, he's only got 4 so far, but these have all been used effectively to help create and then "back up" favorable changes to a number of pages in a specific vertical. The Talker- One of the smartest Wiki-Hackers, in my opinion, is barely an editor of content at all, but simply uses a well-liked editorial account on Talk Pages, helping to sway the discussion in favor of keeping/removing links & content. On rare occasion, rather than actually making changes, the Talker will simply suggest that certain edits be made, then use a secondary or anonymous account to complete them if there's no pushback. The Bad Mouther - This particular Wiki Hacker got caught by another editor and in order to save himself, dug through every edit his accuser had ever made, and ended up being able to keep not only his account, but his edits by making it appear that the accuser was actually an "SEO," whose perspective and judgment were biased. Why Don't Administrators Stop this Behavior?They do, actually. You can see this popular project page called WikiProject Spam, where a "spamstar of glory" (yes, seriously) is awarded for stopping spammers on Wikipedia. A fairly immense to-do list exists on this page, and it's actually one of the Wiki-Hackers' most feared pages. Unfortunately, it's also a tool - Wiki-Hackers who want information removed or who want to build up the "trust" of their own accounts will actually become spam investigators and reporters. One of the best ways to reach administrator level is actually to catch some of the "trusted" accounts that are actually other Wiki-Hackers, and thus the community of Wiki-Hackers is not on particularly good terms with one another. Turning in other hackers puts you above suspicion in a way that few other actions on Wikipedia can, and thus, it's one of the holy grails of the infiltrator-style hackers.How do You Know All This, Rand?Two ways, really. First, I've played around first-hand with some of the pages with Wikipedia. In fact, prior to the "nofollow" implementation on links, I personally had a few editorial accounts through proxy IP addresses, though I probably haven't actively edited Wikipedia pages in the last 9 months. Instead, I've been connecting over email and in-person with a lot of folks who run reputation management and link building campaigns that do leverage Wikipedia. The number of stories, depth of detail, and actual examples (which I obviously can't share without betraying a lot of trust), including the stories I've recounted above, paint a fairly dark picture of what's actually happening at Wikipedia.Granted, because of my profession, I'm almost certainly getting an overrepresentation of the more manipulative aspects of what happens on Wikipedia. It's only natural. While lots of experienced Wiki-Hackers love to share their favorite stories of manipulating the site, very few of the truly quality editors are A) ever going to meet me at a party or go get some drinks with me at a conference bar, or B) boast about the terrific article they created about 70s-style tube socks as fashion accessories.Please do note that the specific stories I've recounted above have had details removed or even slightly modified to keep the identities of my sources anonymous. A couple, as I noted, are second-hand, as well, so I'm guessing some details may be missing. However, even with the details missing, you can still get a sense of the tactics for manipulation and the extent to which people are willing to go to in order to change Wikipedia in their favor.One Quick Example from the SiteThis comes from two friends at Wikipedia who really are legitimate editors and spam fighters, Jon Hochman(one of the foremost authorities on Wikipedia & SEO) and Durova (who spoke at SMX Social in October and had this terrificly informative interview over chat with Jim Hedger). From Durova's Talk Page Archives:I just spent 50 minutes playing cat and mouse with a vandal, and WP:AIV still hasn't acted on my block request. I guess its time to ask for the tools. What do you think? Jehochman (talk/contrib) 04:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Done, 24 hour block. Sometimes it feels good to have the tools. Thanks for the heads up. Cheers, DurovaCharge!04:48, 14 May 2007 (UTC) This one is using proxies. He's over here now: 142.179.62.0 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)Jehochman (talk/contrib) 04:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)I think we are dealing with a black hat SEO who may be using some sort of script. I see a pattern in the edits. My suspicion is that they want one specific reference gone, and are attacking all of them to create confusion. Can we semi-protect the targeted articles, starting with Traffic Power? Jehochman (talk/contrib) 05:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC) Am I caught up on the blocks? Keep me apprised; I'm working on a complex investigation with another editor atm. DurovaCharge!05:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC) Semi-protecting. Give me the full list. DurovaCharge!05:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Blocks are good. Here are the targeted articles. I think he'll be back soon. Jehochman (talk/contrib) 05:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Obviously, this example above is a very amateur attempt, and Jon & Durova are all over it. Professional-level Wiki-Hacking is much more difficult to rat out.The most frustrating part for Wikipedians has to be that they themselves receive no financial reward for their efforts, yet their opposition, the Wiki-Hackers, benefit monetarily and directly when they have success penetrating the spam police.Do all of these Wiki-Wars Really Matter?The most accurate answer is probably "it depends." It's very hard to gauge how much the public trusts information on Wikipedia. My gut tells me that, sadly, a lot of people simply accept whatever Wikipedia says without checking real sources of information (yes, I'm saying that Wikipedia by its very nature is untrustworthy, even if 95%+ of the information there is factual, which is probably a big stretch). However, I can say with some certainty that businesses and individuals get a great deal of value and suffer a great deal of loss when Wikipedia contains positive/negative information about them (very similar to Google or other search engines). Thus, a secondary "black" market will always exist to exploit the site and attempt to change information. Even if Wikipedia went into immediate lockdown mode, there would be auctions for trusted editorial accounts, devious manipulation, and, probably, an even higher price on all of the Wiki-Hacking style activities.There's no real solution to the cat-and-mouse game, unless Jimbo wants to turn Wikipedia into some sort of Mahalo-like resource, where only those invited can edit (and even then, I'm guessing it will just mean higher prices, not an end to hacking).p.s.Yes, the nofollows on all links to Wikipedia are intentionally "nofollowed." Someone should create a blog plug-in to auto-nofollow Wikipedia links so the site stops ranking atop every query in existence.p.p.s.None of the content in this post is intended to suggest that I don't respect the project, its aims, or the lofty aspirations of many of the hardworking people trying to make it a good resource. In fact, I believe quite the opposite - that folks like Durova, in particular, and others like here have a noble, self-sacrificing streak that's both rare and praise-worthy. But, depending on your view of Wikipedia and black/gray hat social media practices as a whole, you might find some of her opponents equally admirable, or at least, impressively creative.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by great scott!Missed SMX London, or just got a taste of SEO and hungry for more? Can't make it to Pubcon, but still want a business write-off in December?  Don't fret! Our good friends at London SEO firm, Distilled are hosting a very unique, very affordable and sure to be very worthwhile training seminar covering the basics of SEO, PPC and Analytics.Will, Duncanand Tomfrom Distilled are not only top-notch at the SEO game, they're about the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet.  They'll be presenting this three hour seminar in London on December 5th, and attendance is extremely limited (I hear there are only about five spots left).  The seminar will not only offer in-person training aimed at business owners, webmasters, and beginning SEOs, but you'll have a chance to get answers about your individual website, a guide to useful resources online as well as a copy of Avinash Kaushik's book, Web Analytics in an Hour a Day, a definite must-read.You can learn more details and register for the seminarat the Distilled website.  As a special bonus, the guys have offered take £20 off of the normal price of £120 for SEOmoz Premium Members.  This makes for a truly outstanding bargain.  If you're going to be in Jolly Ol' in December, and you're looking to expand or refresh your general SEO knowledge, you'd be silly to pass this up.UPDATE FROM RAND:Also - if anyone is going and would care to cover the event with writeups, photos, etc for the YOUmoz/SEOmoz blog, we'd be very appreciative!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by JaneCoplandI'm going to blatantly copy my fellow SMX London Linkbait and Viral Marketing presenter Ciaránand post my slides and notes here for you guys. What can I say. Imitation is flattering, isn't it? And the posts are a good idea: it means that you all get to hear what I said about all the slides and you don't have any irritating PowerPoint presentation to download. Because I know you all secretly believe that downloading massive .ppt files will take far too long and will crash your browsers.Apologies for the strange little boxes on either side of the SEOmoz.org logo. Photoshop thinks they're a different colour than PowerPoint would have you believe.The introductory slide. Brilliant. I think I started well; don't you? You have to love that font, and the way "Linkbait" is a bit bigger than "and the Real World."I had a hunch that most of the audience knew the basic definition of linkbait. If you've made it as far as a Linkbait and Viral Marketing panel, you've probably read at least one article about the subject. However, just in case, I briefly defined the concept and tried to shoot down some misconceptions you'll hear about linkbait. I believe that linkbait's name hurts it in terms of reputation because it implies a manipulation of people's intentions. However, people will always link to good stuff and abandon poor-quality content: if you can create this good content and benefit your business, go right ahead.Before I jumped into the actual content of linkbait, I went through some of the ways linkbait is spread... and tried to point out that Digg isn't the sole source ofall social media traffic. My goal was to say "Digg" only once or twice in the presentation, but when it comes to linkbait, that's like trying to completely eliminate words like "um" from your vocabulary, no matter how much you'd like to.For some reason, people who use particular blogging platforms seem to like linking to others who share their interests and use the same service. Livejournal actively promotes communication between people with common interests. Communities such as http://community.livejournal.com/libraries/allow everyone who is interested in libraries to get together and chat. And you know, even to an English major, libraries can be pretty boring. Do you have library-industry linkbait? Let these guys know about it.Similarly, your Jeep linkbait can spread quickly through sites like JK Jeep Forum. The traffic mightn't be enormous, but it's targeted. General forums like Gorilla Maskand Farkcan send massive amounts of traffic to less targeted linkbait.Of course, you have to mention Digg and its esteemed counterparts. You also have to mention Sphinn, since it's SMX. The difference between industry-specific social news sites and the mainstream heavy-weights is similar to that of forums. Reddit isn't the place for Internet Marketing news; Sphinn is.If you've ever looked at the front page of Reddit or clicked Stumble, you will have noticed what becomes popular.  Some of the content is inappropriate, inane, or a dreadful combination of both. The winners of the "I Look Like my Dog" contest are pretty funny. Look at that grey-haired woman. Hilarious. But your client, who provides large mortgages to people who want to build apartment buildings, mightn't agree. Nor may your client like the "In case of zombies, break glass" gun. I have just realised how many mentions of zombies I made during this presentation...An example of a site where "anything goes" is Cracked.com. Has there ever been anything posted on Cracked that has received less than 1000 diggs? The slide is small when posted here, but the example content on Cracked's front page is the "5 Mental Disorders That Can Totally Get You Laid." Awesome linkbait. The health insurance company you're doing SEO for will totally love it.I provided an example of some linkbait former SEOmozzer Matt Inmanhad produced for Avatar Financial Group. Avatar Financial is a hard money and bridge loans firm, based in Seattle. Matt's piece, "21 things I learned about CakePHP," attracted a good number of links to the site, none of which were relevant to the financial industry.One of the tactics I use when dreaming up linkbait is to think about the problems, oddities, and quirks of the industry in question. The graph shows a painstakingly scientific (i.e: Wikipedia-based) research experiment we did to figure out how many American citizens wouldn't qualify for Green Cards (permanent residency) if they had to. Which they don't. And which Digg was quick to point out. The title of the Digg entry was slightly mis-worded and the concept of hypothetical situations was lost of most of the Digg crowd, but they still granted the piece 764 diggs. We weren't too upset with that total, given the fact that the content wasn't about Ubuntu, Ron Paul, or a video game.Some of the graph's features were more controversial than others (and some require some serious explanation). The graph is far from 100% accurate. Although the post itself explained all its omissions and oddities, few people actually read the surrounding text. This piece would have been a fantastic piece of linkbait for an immigration attorney. Unfortunately it wasn't, but it shows some of the neat things you can do in such an industry.Secondly, keep in mind the problems faced by your potential clients. What are they interested in? Student loans companies can consider using the ways people waste their money during university. They can pitch their content to Freshmen (first year students) and high school seniors, since the majority of the people looking for loans are of that age. Companies that specialise in refinancing student loans can pitch their content to university seniors in much the same way.Everyone wants to be linked to with the right anchor text. It helps a lot. "Click here" links are still links, but "student loans refinancing" links are even better. Unless your linkbait's subject matter is quite different from some of your keywords, attempt to use them in titles, descriptions, and the like. You can't control how people link to you (Rebecca's rocket ships?), but you throw them some hints.Dutch site Hema.nl produced this neat Flash presentationof their... um... products page? Product highlights page? No, I don't really know what it is, because I don't speak Dutch. But I linked to it because it's really cool, as did a whole lot of other people who don't speak Dutch and who didn't link to Hema.nl's Dutch competitors. And that's the point.While I don't recommend "hiding" linkbait, there's no need to have it splashed all over a corporate homepage. You don't even have to link to it from the homepage if you don't want to. But it's generally a good idea to have the content link back to the most important pages on the site! Remember that very popular pages within a site can appear as indented results for some searches, such as a brand or company name. You're unlikely to successfully "hide" anything popular.Here, I provide a "real life" example of someone else's linkbait that exemplifies bait for a boring website. Not that I'm saying wedding invitations are dull. If you're getting married, I suppose they're mightily interesting. Here, WeddingPaperDivas.com provide some "geek weddings" bait, featuring wedding parties dressed as super heros, Star Trek characters, and zombies. For those of you keeping count, that was zombie-mention number two.This piece of content links to all the site's important pages via its navigation template, but there are no links to the bait from the homepage of the site. Their linkbait is on-topic and highly appealing.I used the "Are you a Rebel or a Yankee" test to highlight a piece of linkbait that could have been more beneficial than it really was. This test - and others like it - were quite popular around six months ago, but this version of the test only provides a final result and a "send to your friends" link. For my third and final zombie reference, I provide an example of a cool badge that the quiz-makers should have made, so that I could show everyone that I have both a 67% chance of surviving the zombie apocalypse, and a 57% Dixie accent.This is a recent example of the ever-so-easy but slightly unethical practice of Bait and Switch. For Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, we have pictures of limousines that have decided to drive over steep hills in towns like San Francisco. Who doesn't like high-centered limousines? Everyone gets a chuckle out of that. I linked to the limousines in a previous SEOmoz blog post. Upon re-visiting the blog post to find an example of good corporate linkbait, I find that the page now redirects to the company's Miami limousine rental page. Miami is probably their most profitable market. Most of the links that point to the page will contain the words "limo" or "limousine."While I'm not promoting the bait and switch, as it is a bit unethical and does result in people linking to something that they did not intend, it's an option that many sites seem to use once they're received a lot of links to a piece of popular content.There are three quick points about linkbait that you'll want to keep in mind.Negative commentary is normal in all arenas of social media, but you're well advised to turn on comment moderation before launching a piece of content. You can't control what people say on social news sites, forums, or blogs, but you can control the commentary on home-turf.The "real life" examples are being done right now. It's not impossible - and not even too difficult - to create linkbait for "regular" clients.(Yes, I know you can read the slides...) Linkbait sometimes fails to garner a lot of links, votes, or attention. Oh well! You've still created fresh content and it's likely that your practice will pay off in time. You'll learn what works, what doesn't, and exactly where and how to market that which you create.This is the point at which I thanked the crowd and stopped talking, and thankfully, they honoured the fact that I was finished by clapping. It would have been embarrassing if they hadn't. Again, I've uploaded the presentation hereif you'd like to have it for yourself and play it repeatedly!Update: The version at SlideShare appears to have been converted into OpenOffice format. Some of the slides' formatting appears to be a little bit strange. In London, the crowd saw the correctly-formatted version!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishThis week, as Scott heads off on vacation for Thanksgiving, I'm posting our latest Whiteboard Friday on the concept of links as votes of importance from the search engines' perspective and how link juice passes. Below the video itself, I've created a few helpful graphics to better illustrate the phenomenon I'm discussing:  There are two big topics from the video that would benefit from additional explanation, and I think visual representation is probably the way to go (particularly since these are supposed to be for our more visual learners in the blog audience):How Links Pass Importance from one Page to Another:How Advanced SEOs Can Control the Flow of Link Juice:A word of warning - I don't say "advanced" lightly. We've had plenty of experiences where implementing what we thought was a smart nofollow strategy to control link juice has either backfired and cost us traffic or had little to no visible impact. The best way to implement strategies that rely on link flow control is, in my opinion, to start small, test, then refine and push out to the site as a whole. It's most effective in our experience on large domains with tens of thousands to millions of pages and lots of pages in "supplemental." When used properly, link flow can help to get these into the main index.Also - since raw link juice (aka global link popularity, aka PageRank) is one of several hundred factors in the algorithms at the major engines, don't be surprised if this tactic has little impact on competitive rankings. We find it to be much more valuable and effective in pushing up the visibility of very long tail material.Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! We will most likely not have a blog post up between now and Cyber Monday, so please enjoy a few days off (or, you know, go check out all the cool stuff inside premium you've been neglecting to read).p.s. Note that the images I've created are not to scale and don't correspond to any given percentage or amount of link juice lost or passed. They're only meant to be representative of the basic link flow concepts.UPDATE FROM RAND:A bit of my logic in the images is in dispute in the comments, and we're asking Sito take a look at some math to help us figure it out. Basically, the strategy of sculpting link juice is still sound, but the idea of a "leak" of juice through adding additional links to a page may not be accurate (at least, according to the original Google PR formula). Many thanks to Hamlet Batistafor bringing this up :)Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by Sarah Bird, EsquireNOTE FROM RAND:Our newest mozzer, Sarah Bird, comes with a pedigree in law and a passion for search and technology. Her addition to our team brings not only an in-house attorney (which has already proven invaluable during the funding and growth process) but a phenomenally vibrant and probing intellect to apply to areas where search intersects with the law. Please help me in welcoming SEOmoz's first "esquire." :)May it Please the Mozzers, I present myself to you as your legal resource for all things SEO/M related. A graduate of the University of Washington School of Law,I have spent the last three years litigating complex and diverse legal issues. With much gratitude and enthusiasm, I recently accepted SEOmoz's invitation to bring my expertise to the SEO/M community. Although I cannot give you legal advice, I can give you information about the law. My goal is to expand SEOmoz's scope and increase its utility by b(law)ging on legal issues and trends affecting the SEO/M industry. In time, I aim to provide sample contracts, cease and desist letters, DMCA takedown notices, and disclaimers for your use. I will also issue a weekly blog post featuring questions and answers on topics such as copyrightand fair use, trademark, privacy, contracts, International IP treaties, net neutrality, and license agreements.It bears repeating: This is not legal advice. Legaladvice is when a lawyer applies the law to a specific set of facts. For legal advice, I urge you to contact qualified counsel. However, this blog post will help you avoid common pitfalls and determine when you need to seek out legal advice. I offer you my legal mind. In exchange, please forward me your burning legal questions. Because law touches so many areas of SEO/M, I would appreciate your guidance on topics of interest and importance to the community. Feel free to comment here or email me directly. I look forward to working with you. Let's get started! I’d like to start off my first Q&A post by answering a question posed by Will Critchlow from Distilled. He was working through the complicated intersection of U.S. copyright law and international law. More specifically, Will asked questions like:How does one know where a copyright infringement case is heard and what law is applied for violations involving parties from all over the world? Location of the server? Blogger? Copyright holder?Can a U.S. blogger employ the United States' legal definition of “fair use” if he or she is writing their posts to primarily UK-based viewers?Can a U.K. blogger employ U.S. definitions of “fair use” if she is posting primarily to Britain-based viewers?[note: for those of you who don’t even know what copyright is or why it is important, I plan on tackling more basic issues either through a weekly Q&A post and possibly a Copyright Guide. Please don’t be discouraged from asking beginner legal questions.]Mr. Critchlow has jumped right in to the deep end with this question. The short answer to his question [you're going to love this] is "it depends." [That'll be $500 bucks please.]  Stay with me now. While this kind of post may make you feel like you're about to expire from ennui, remember that this could keep you out of jail some day. At the very least, memorizing a few of the key legal terms and principles below will make you sound tremendously impressive at your next SEO/M event.There is no such thing as international copyright law.First, there is no such thing as international copyright law. Oh no. That would make it too easy. Instead, there is a whole conglomeration of international treaties, unions, and conventions. If it weren't for these international treaties and conventions, there would be no way for copyright holders to enforce their rights in other countries.Because of the rise of global commerce and the increasing importance of intellectual property, most nations of the world have entered into a series of treaties, unions and conventions. For the over-achievers, I am linking to a list of countries and the various copyright treaties/conventions they have entered into. For example, the U.S. has entered into the following treaties: the Berne Union, the Paris revision of the Berne treaty, NAFTA, the UCC, the Paris revision of the UCC, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, blah blah blah etc. etc. These treaties often have different levels of copyright protection and jurisdiction rules. This is part of the reason that the short answer to Mr. Critchlow's question is "it depends." I'm not just being coy.I'm going to give you some general principles and trends to try and make international copyright not seem so complicated. Then I'm going to ruin your new-found confidence by throwing several wrenches into the mix. Sounds like fun, right?Where will my international copyright case be heard? Very generally speaking, a copyright infringement case with international components (what I'm calling an "international copyright case") will be brought where the infringement took place. Lawyers refer to this principle as the “territoriality” of copyright law. Of course, this begs the question, “How do you determine where the infringement took place when dealing with infringements on the internet?”Courts around the world have grappled with this question, the same way philosophers have grappled with the mind/body problem. Is the infringement location determined by the location of the server? By the residence of the person authorizing the infringement? The residence of the copyright holder resides? Where the defendant resides? What about where the harm from the infringement occurred? After laboring over this issue, most courts in most of the world have given up trying to use a simple, one-factor test.  It’s just not that simple. Instead, judges are doing what judges love to do: considering all the factors and then going with their gut instincts. It’s similar to Justice Stewart’s famous definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Despite the difficulty of determining the location of infringement on the internet, there are certain things courts all over the world agree on. First, the mere fact that you can view a website with infringing content in Country A does not give Country A jurisdiction. Now, if you can purchase infringing content, such as a book or a song from that website in Country A, then that may be different story. Second, the mere fact that a host server is located in Country B, without more, does not give Country B jurisdiction. If the connection is that minimal, it is not enough to establish jurisdiction.Because of the many factors to be considered, there may be more than one right answer in determining where your international copyright case should be heard. It is increasingly common in the global marketplace that two or more countries have jurisdiction to hear the dispute.For example, assume that the copyright holder lives in the U.K., the infringer lives in the U.K., but the host server and the target market for the infringing website is in Russia. It is likely that the case could be brought in either Britain or Russia because both countries have substantial connections to the dispute.Don’t you just love multiple choice questions where the answer can be all of the above? What country’s law will the forum court apply?This surprises a lot of non-law people, but courts sometimes apply the laws of other countries. They don’t like doing it, but they do it in certain situations.Why would the court apply another country’s laws? Sometimes parties to a contract agree to a specific forum in advance. For example, Able Corporation enters into a licensing contract with Brutus Corporation that includes a choice of law and forum. Both parties agree in the contract that any disputes shall be settled using U.K. law and be filed in Britain. Able resides in the U.K. (hence the choice of forum) and Brutus resides in Brazil. When Brutus exceeds the scope of the license agreement, Able can bring suit in the U.K. and U.K. law will be applied. If there were no contract in place, then Able may have to bring the suit in Brazil and be subject to Brazilian copyright law. If there is no contract in place, and often there isn’t, then courts will usually apply the law of the forum country. More accurately, the court will apply the law of the country where the infringement took place. For reasons discussed above about jurisdiction, the country where the infringement took place is usually the forum country. However, that’s not always the case. Lawyers everywherecontinue to be in a tizzy about “extra-territorial” applications of copyright law. For example, in the case of London Film Productions Ltd. v. Intercontinental Communications, Inc., 580 F.Supp. 47 (1984), the plaintiff corporation was a resident of Britain. The defendant was a resident of the United States. The infringements took place in Chile and other Latin American countries. Which court do you suppose heard the case? The United States federal court. The court determined that it had sufficient contacts with the facts giving rise to the dispute to justify hearing the case, even though the infringements took place in other countries. Thus, the U.S. federal court judge was put in the position of having to apply several other Latin American countries’ laws. While courts don’t generally enjoy doing this, the alternative, reasoned the U.S. federal court, was to require the plaintiff to bring the case in several different Latin American countries. This would be a colossal waste of resources. Thus, after considering all the factors, the U.S. federal court determined it had jurisdiction to hear the case and that it would apply the laws of foreign countries where appropriate to determine whether infringements in fact took place. London Film Productionsis an example of a court having jurisdiction, but applying another country’s law. Location of the infringement is the one of the strongest factors in determining which country's law to apply. The cautionary tale of Hew Griffithsis another example of an international copyright case that was not decided in the same country where the infringement took place. But this case goes even further than London Film Productions by not even applying the law of the country where the infringement took place. An Australian citizen who never set foot in the U.S., Griffiths was extradited from Australia to the U.S. for making available to Australians pirated software that was copyrighted in the United States. Based on the trends and rules discussed above, Australian courts would have had jurisdiction and applied Australian law in this situation. That was certainly an option. Instead, however, Griffiths was extradited to the U.S. and plead guilty to violating U.S. copyright laws.What’s the point? The point is that although people will tell you that a case should be heard where the infringement took place and that country’s laws should be applied, that is not always the case as demonstrated by London Film Productionsand the tale of Hew Griffiths. But I heard that something called “the National Treatment Doctrine” determined the choice of law!If you do your own research on copyright infringement and conflict of laws, you may read that something called the “national treatment policy” determines which law is going to be applied. This is a common oversimplification. Don’t fall for it. The Berne Treaty, probably the preeminent international copyright treaty, requires that foreign copyright holders be treated the same as native copyright holders in that country’s court system. In other words, people from the U.S. can bring infringement cases in Germany and must be provided the same rights as a German citizen. This sounds as if the national treatment doctrine requires that German copyright law be applied to foreign citizens who bring cases in Germany. However, for reasons discussed above, the forum country sometimes applies a foreign nation’s laws. Depending on the facts of the case, “national treatment” could mean providing the same rights as a German citizen under German law, or the same rights as a German citizen under U.S. law.The moral of the story is that location of the court and the “national treatment doctrine” don’t always determine the choice of law.What if suit is brought in two different countries arising out of the same set of facts and courts in different countries claim jurisdiction over the case? If, after reading all of the above, you are thoroughly confused, you are not alone. Attorneys and judges regularly confuse these issues. Jurisdiction and choice of law issues require consideration of many different factors and reasonable minds often look at the same factors and come to different conclusion. In the end, it is entirely possible that two different courts, located in different countries, both have good reasons for hearing a case. This is when it is important to hire very top notch legal representatives to out-lawyer your adversary. For example, assume that you’re a U.S. resident and you have written something brilliant and wonderful and that you own the copyright. Let’s also assume that Brutus Corporation, domiciled also in the U.S., has made a parody of your work....in French. Brutus is using a server located in France to reach millions of French viewers with the parody. Your lawyers will tell you to go bring your claim in France because there is a good argument that is “where the infringement took place” AND French law is more favorable to your case than U.S. law. This is because the French have stronger “moral rights” to protect copyright and they have a much narrower definition of “fair use,” a likely defense to your claim.After you file your claim in France, Brutus Corporation is going to hire crackerjack attorneys to convince the French court that the U.S. is really the best place to hear the case because that is where both of the parties reside. Brutus Corporation has a great incentive to argue against France having jurisdiction; if they get the case before a U.S. federal court, they may be able to convince that judge to apply U.S. law. The United States Copyright Act has a very liberal definition of “fair use” that includes the right to parody copyrighted material. Thus, the defendant has a greater chance of winning if it can get the case moved. The plaintiff wants to keep it in France and the defendant would rather it be heard in the United States. A factual situation like this could really go either way because both courts have significant contacts with the parties to the suit and therefore could exercise jurisdiction.Now you are just as confused as all the lawyers and judges around the world.Alright mozzers. It is my hope that after you read this you will appreciate why lawyers and b(law)gers appear to be obfuscating whenever they respond "it depends" to your international copyright issues. There is not one right answer to questions of jurisdiction and conflicts of law. The law continues to sputter along after developments in technology.  From now on, you are more informed than most people about international copyright issues. And you are probably still confused. But hopefully you know why you are confused and that it's not your fault. All the lawyers and judges around the world are still struggling with these issues.As this area of law continues to develop, I will keep you updated.On a final note, be sure to consult a qualified legal attorney if you're struggling with a copyright issue. My post is not a replacement for specifically-tailored legal advice. Thanks for your attention to this post. Best Regards,Sarahp.s.Don't forget! Not only do I invite questions and comments about this particular post, but any legal questions at all for the (hopefully) weekly series of blog posts on legal issues in the search world.Do you like this post? YesNo