Given the recent changes at Google, I think these MAY (note the capitals and emphasis on MAY) provide us some insight that is useful.

TrustFlow and Citation Flow

So this is what it looks like. It ONLY appears on the FRESH index and it allows a person to (ostensibly) evaluate the true authority and relevence of a domain.

So here is my challenge (err…invitation). Take this thing for a test drive. Run it up against PR , and the other tools like SEOmoz (which I think has more flaws than it should). Then comment below about how you think it stacks up.

BTW -  I do NOT want to hear that (waa!!) it is horrible because your site is better than that. If you comment, please offer complete and total honesty about the quality of the authority built to your site and DID these two new metric in fact capture an accurate picture of it.

What do you think?

Trust Flow and Citation Flow – MajesticSEO’s two new metrics… is a post from: Eric On Search

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Protected: Google Local Optimization DIY Kit – Part 2 is a post from: Eric On Search

It is at this point that I reply “These people are FRIENDS of MINE. And have been. I TRUST them. I CARE about them.” I then proceed to tell them one of six dozen stories about the goodness of the people that have links on this blog or any of my other blogs. And hopefully that quiets them down. But oftentimes they just go away, thinking that there MUST be some trick to it.

For the 1,643rd time, THERE IS NOT A TRICK. These people are my friends. I care about them and their businesses and families and lives. Yet another example came to the surface this week. I am sharing it so that in the future I can share this with others who want to be friends with me for real.

1. STEP ONE: Get to know me. And I will get to know you.

2. STEP TWO: As part of that process, you will soon find that I care deeply about your success and you about mine. When you have a significant event, whether it is a success or a comedy, or a tragedy in your area I will be there to support you. Here would be an example of that. I was honored to spend time with Gary Lundholm and the folks at the Real Estate Group, helping build my little part of that effort.

3. STEP THREE: When a significant event or tragedy or something otherwise happens in MY hometown, if you care enough to call and check in, you are at the front of the line of my friends. For those who are interested, I live and work in Southern Indiana. Three days ago, we had a severe series of tornadoes hit some of our communities.  The first two people to call me were Gary Lundholm and Mary Elizabeth Allen both from the The Real Estate Group.  I communicated with them back and forth and shared pictures with them about what we were going through over the weekend. Gary kept in touch with me. They asked for pictures. Then on Monday, they posted on their two blogs. One here on their Insider Blog and one here on their corporate blog. In these posts  they ask their friends to help the Red Cross help our friends here in Southern Indiana.

That’s what  friends do.

If you know Gary Lundholm and The Real Estate Group at all, you know that this is not out of the ordinary. It is how they do things. It is part of their culture.

In all fairness since my friends at TREG called,  many folks have checked in over the weekend and we are fine here. We spent our time helping others. It kind of strikes our family as wrong to wait for others to help our neighbors when we are nearby and have a pickup truck (so to speak). Many people checked in on facebook and everything else.

If you are a real estate agent in Hampton Roads and you are looking for a place to work where people care about you and your career…and if you ask me about it, I will point you to my blogroll and tell you to Contact Gary, Steven, Joe, Pam, Mary Elizabeth, Garrett, or any of the other staff that are there to help agents.  Why?? Because I KNOW they will treat you well. They are FRIENDS of mine. And they are remarkably wonderful people.

If you are another person that just wants me to link to you, start with step one. Not with me, but WITH EVERYONE. Be a friend to them. Do that FIRST. BE the kind of friend I just described above.  The links will take care of themselves. I promise.

The Real Estate Group and some things we can learn from them. is a post from: Eric On Search

Matt Couloute is a great lawyer by all accounts. He was the youngest prosecutor in Norwalk, Connecticut and worked for the NFL and was an analyst on Court TV according to FOX News.

One of the first things that a lawyer will tell you is: Don’t represent yourself. You will mess things up. You will let your emotions take control and you will do things that will get you deeper and deeper in trouble. And this is TOTALLY the case when it comes to online reputation management as well. Mr. Couloute apparently had him some girlfriends. As in more than one.

You can read the whole sordid tale here. Apparently one of the ladies… One that he left to marry the other one 12 days later (snort) , posted about him on liarscheatersrus.com. Splendid. This sort of thing happens FAR more than you would imagine.

But did Matt Couloute take his own advice and enlist some professional help? NNNOOO… he is a SMART (sarcasm inserted) guy who is going to sue his way out of this. All good lawyers do this! (good grief) He had to go turn it into a national news story with a lawsuit, the press and everything. Wow.

Note to Matt Couloute :  Nice work genius.

Google your name now…Now you do not have just LiarsCheatersRus.com to contend with to rank for your own name…you have the New York Post, FoxNews, AbovetheLaw.com, Jezebel.com and LOTS OF OTHER LEGITIMATE NEWS SITES to contend with. In short, my friend, you have made a ROYAL mess of this and probably made is so that this will rank this way for…well…ever. Seriously.

Additional Note to Matt Couloute: Your Honor My Client is an IDIOT.

Note to others who might suffer the same fate. PLEASE ask a PROFESSIONAL and get some proper advice.  You just went from bad reputation management issue to INSANELY bad reputation management issue. Much tougher to clean up.

Onlookers: This is not Google’s fault. Matt Coulotte is now a news story and one of his own making.

Matt Couloute: Your honor, my client… is a post from: Eric On Search

First off, I wanted to say thanks to Morgan Carey at RealEstateWebmasters.com for inviting me to speak yet again. he is a friend who I respect and admire for his talents, his team and what they have built. If I had to go into a city and start a real estate business and could only make one phone call. I would dial his number.

I could write a TON about what happened in Vegas at REW. I could write about a BUNCH of great people that I met. I could write about how great it was to reconnect with old friends. I could write about how dynamic this group of people is and  how they are going to continue to lead the real estate industry in online marketing. And for that matter, I could write about some of the great ideas that people are working on and I could blow your mind with some of their creativity.

But then I got this simple email from Leslie Hogan, thanking me for presenting and telling me that she had posted about the Summit on her blog. (Go ahead. Read it. I’ll wait. Seriously. It is worth it.) She simply mentioned me, Dave Abernathy from Waterfront Properties and Cindy Knight and said thanks. That simple email made an otherwise REALLY hectic day go  much easier…and it was fun to see that someone “got it” and acted on it.

She got my point about Paying it Forward. She inherently knows that true online reputation (done right)  is only an accurate reflection of offline reputation.

Thanks a bunch Leslie for applying what was said at the Summit. The true spirit of it. You have made a new friend. May you make many more and I have no doubt that you will.

Thanks for “getting it”. Call me anytime that you need some assistance with your efforts. Not as a customer. As a friend. That is how this stuff works.

The REW Summit RECAP is a post from: Eric On Search

In the online real estate marketing industry we have a lot of fun with with noobies who don’t get it. We make jokes when they claim we are “manipulating the Google“. We have fun at their expense when they are “looking for link love in all the wrong places“. In general , we have a blast.

But we all know that in the end, it is Google’s world and we are just renting space there. And we certainly do not claim that we can manipulate things on the search results. That’s a bit arrogant. We only try to make our online reputation match our offline reputation by making sure that we do things correctly. Or something like that.

Back to the ad above about Lighthouse 1204. First one guy noticed it and put his thoughts on Lighthouse 1204 on his site. Then another guy chimed in with more about Lighthouse 1204 and making misleading claims. And then Lighthouse 1204 gets more famous.

You see how this works? (grin) There will be more to come and I will document them as I see them. (Mostly from pingbacks to this post, I guess.

Take home lesson for the day. Do NOT use search result guarantees in a mass distributed ad. No one can guarantee search results. Who knows, though…it might make you famous…or was that infamous. (grin)

Lighthouse 1204 and other online marketing lessons… is a post from: Eric On Search

Here’s the story as reported in Search Engine Land. A Belgian newspaper consortium sues Google for copyright infringement for indexing their content in Google News. They win. And thus they lose.

The court ordered fine was not small. 25,000 Euros for each instance and day of non-compliance. In addition Google has to get specific permission from publishers in Belgium before indexing it in Google News. (that’s yet another impediment for them to do business in Belgium…nice going guys)

So Google has complied. Completely. It has removed (de-indexed) the paper’s listings from its main search index completely. They thought that being indexed in Google News was costing them traffic? Nice going guys. NOT being indexed in Google is going to make that traffic loss look like chump change.

Here’s the lesson.

Evaluate the total value of a relationship before you burn that bridge. If you are going to try and burn someone in court, you may want to consider the possibility that this person will take ALL of their marbles and go home.

And another lesson.

Online marketing is about relationships. Some pieces of a relationship may work for you and some against. If you cannot work WITH people, you will end up, bitter and alone. So, note to Copiepresse… the newspaper organization… don’t be that guy. Form relationships. Work within those relationships. Do not burn bridges. The toes you step on may be connected to the butt that you need to kiss tomorrow. ( insert 100 other applicable cliches here)

The final lesson.

I am NOT saying that Google is always right…or fair for that matter. I think that is an ideal that cannot be reached. I AM saying that in MOST cases, they are pretty open and transparent. In ALL cases, they have a HUGE number of eyeballs going to their site. And as such, a flimsy little newspaper (by comparison) or any other site for that matter, needs to realize that on totality, Google is providing them a good deal rather than arrogantly thinking they are on equal footing.

Belgian Newspapers cry “Retaliation” by Google after lawsuit -there’s a lesson here. is a post from: Eric On Search

Look I would be the LAST person to say that the folks in the Googleplex are purer than the wind-driven snow, and i also would be the last person to say that they are anything but dominant…

But folks, c’mon. Seriously.

Google is a website. Yes, they are the librarian of the internet, but at the end of the day they are a website. If people don’t think the results are correct they CAN and WILL leave and search on another engine that provides more relevance. The article in Fox News compares their dominance to Microsoft’s dominance in PC software.

They are NOT the same.

It is EASY for someone to search via Bing or Yahoo or <>. Quick, go to the store and find a PC (not a Mac) that does not run on Windows…I dare ya… There is a huge difference.

I have NO idea whether Google has tweaked their results. I do not care. It is their website. The bottomline for me looks like this. If Google’s results are crappy people will not visit their site. Great so now we are going to have beaurocrats trying to figure out the algorithm (presumably by trying to subpoena documents from Google) and have hearings on whether the “intent of the algo” was to weed out spam or promote a specific Google entity over a competitor??

Two things for you beaurocrats:

1) Good luck in forcing Google to release its algorithm to the public. If I was them I’d tell you to pound sand too.

2) If you ARE successful and want someone to help you dig through the documentation. Call me. I will be HAPPY to help.

3) Wonder how long it would be for a retired investigator to be hired by an SEO firm after the investigation. My guess is minutes, not hours or months.

So why don’t you busy bodies in Washington save us all the trouble. Yes Google “might” have tweaked the results. No it is not a big deal. Yes it would be harmful to Google to let out how they run the algo. No, I am not kidding.

Google – FTC – Anti-Trust? Good Grief… is a post from: Eric On Search

To all my competitors. Please do this. Please go try and be stupid and spam Google…

To everyone else, let’s take a more measured approach, shall we? Building likes on Facebook and doing a good job at social media is part of building a web presence. I RECOMMEND it. I recommend building it NATURALLY. White hat. Making your online presence match your offline. Whatever the new code word of the day is for doing it the RIGHT way.

Did you notice the banner at the top of my site? It says “Build your web presence, don’t just add to it.” That’s code for “Quality and not Quantity.”

Google has HUNDREDS of indicators as to what makes a site rank. For someone to totally unbalance their efforts toward social media is as stupid as to unbalance it in the direction of onpage optimization or links whilst neglecting the rest. A balanced and holistic approach will almost always win in the end if it is applied with diligence.

Would you like the results of RESEARCH, HARD WORK and EFFORT as to which of the indicators Google puts MORE weight on in their algorithm? That’s what I can help you with. Call me. Seriously. I do answer the phone. Most times, search engine marketing constants are more about time management and FAR less about trying to trick the search engines.

Nearly always, as this article in Search Engine Journal indicated, there will be a bunch of folks out there spamming and jamming to get good rankings…and then crying when their unbalanced approach does not work or they get penalized.

If you build your web presence according to Google’s TOS you do not have to worry about that. If the folks on your blogroll REALLY are your friends. You don’t have to worry about that. If your social media feedback signals coming to your site are people that REALLY DO LIKE YOU, you don’t have to worry about that.

How about we work on building a complete web presence rather than just adding to it.

Just my .02

Google incorporates Feedback into Algo. Ummm…ok… ;-) is a post from: Eric On Search

My first thought was that this was / is incredibly stupid of them on it’s face. I understand trademark protection. I get all that. I am not talking about that. I am talking about the fact that purposefully creating negative publicity by getting many of an industry’s bloggers riled up is NOT a good thing. I do not think that the Lones Group fully grasped who they were serving and how that decision would “serve” them.

I have only met Daniel a couple of times socially over the years. Argue his impact on real estate bloggers…okayfine. The bottom line is that a) he does not deserve this kind of treatment and a group that “apparently” at least to me is a very clear case of where sometimes bad is bad.

The Lones Group – Sometimes bad pub is bad is a post from: Eric On Search