In a mockery to the the ITAA’s bullshit event last week, I present to you reverse domain hijacking.

What is it? Reverse domain name hijacking is when a trademark owner fraudulantly claims a trademark interest with a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy with WIPO. If the domain owner fails to make a case, there is a good chance the complaintant gets the domain name.

Italian tire company, Pirelli, has decided it would really like to own the domain name zero.us. Problem is, someone else already owns it. Pirelli has filed a claim stating — “In view of these circumstances, there is no reasonable possibility that the domain name was selected by (the) respondent for any purpose other than a brazen attempt to create a likelihood of confusion with (the) complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of respondent’s Web site.”

Hmm.. generic word, zero. Website present has nothing to do with tires. Good thing the owner has an experienced domain lawyer on his side.

Ethical? Better question, are the affiliate links going to the writer’s account or MSNBC?

Scroll down to the fifth paragraph of this article about online dating to see affiliate links to GothicMatch and FarmersOnly (odd niche but it claims to have over 59,000 members.)

Update: As readers pointed out, the affiliate link for FarmersOnly has been removed, GothicMatch and GreenFriends’ affiliate links remain.

How embarassing for the person who named this event — “Internet “Click Fraud” Tricks: Domain Name Tasting, Joy Riding, Parking, Kiting and Other Dirty Tricks -a Webcast & In-Person Briefing.” Unfortunately the ITAA is a powerful trade group, members including Motorola and Microsoft.

As Frank Schilling points out in his domain name blog, these guys are up to no good.

Cross eyed confusion like this opens up big doors for lawyers and snake oil “anti-fraud” salesmen. Remember the whole Yahoo click fraud lawsuit? Checkmate Strategic Group pocketed $5 million, Yahoo had their click fraud slate wiped clean not only of fraudulant clicks but also “unwanted clicks, unqualified clicks, improper clicks, non-converting clicks, inadequately converting clicks.”

I can understand and accept confusions with all of this jargon. Its hard to keep track of. However, I get pissed when the word fraud is casually slung around legitimate online business. Last time it was an AOL blogger who called said PPC arbitragers con artists. This time its different. If we don’t crack down on loose language we may wake up to find a legal system that writes our businesses out of the picture.

“San Francisco resident Wendy Nguyen was even more shocked to receive a bill for $26,000 after her cell phone was unknowingly stolen before she left for an overseas vacation… She was able to prove via airline and passport documents that she was out of the country and couldn’t possibly have made the unauthorized calls from San Francisco during that time, but Cingular still held Wendy accountable for all charges. Not only that, they advised Wendy that if she couldn’t pay the bill she should consider filing for bankruptcy!”

Very interesting…

Besides YouTube and forums, one of the biggest productivity killers for webmasters is carpel tunnel and other repetitive strain injuries. Late last year I hit a major roadblock, hardly able to do more than 40 minutes of serious work at a time.

The first thing to do is make sure your computer workstation is set up properly. Chair height, table height, screen height — it all matters. OSHA has a great illustration of what your setup should look like.

The second thing is to make sure you have a good ergonomic keyboard. Last year I got rid of my old keyboard and standard Microsoft mouse and purchased an Adesso keyboard with a Glidepoint touchpad built in to the center. Besides having a more natural key layout, the touchpad in the center means I am not constantly shifting my hands around to use the mouse. The downside is this should take you several days to get used to, and you may even feel a productivity drop for weeks.

I should probably lay off of the negative Google posts, but it seems to be a hot topic now of days.

The amount of bad publicity Google gets appears to be steadily increasing. There was once a time where Google was viewed as the good guys. The whole “don’t be evil” thing really did represent Google’s early years. Once symbolic, post-IPO few care about it anymore.

I think there are two groups which may have the strongest impact on Google in the upcoming months:

1. Business owners who rely on Google’s traffic, free and paid. In the past, major algorithm changes angered many. These voices were relatively neutralised as other web site owners naturally recieved placements others lost. The Adwords quality score is as it has an across-the-board negative effect on the entire userbase.

2. Privacy advocates have been around for a long time. As long as Google provides a service in exchange for private information privacy advocates voices will be muted. Despite decades of e-mail most users still broadcast private messages across the web when free encryption is available to them. I think we will see the same happen with search — i.e. average users don’t care.

Wal-Mart suffers from a noisy opposition. Much like Google, Wal-Mart’s opposition originates from displaced business owners. The difference is Wal-Mart’s opposition has matured and spread to new evangelists who may actually have little to gain financially. This appears to also be in part from the low-income stereotype surrounding the discounter — something Google does not have to worry about.

The biggest risk is government intervention. Anti-Google views could ignite the passage of laws that require thousands of other businesses to comply as well. In proportion to size, the large companies absorb the compliance costs while the small guys are crushed by it.

Happy Friday!

One of my favorite blogs, Mashable, was just banned in Thailand.

Earlier this month the blog owner, Pete Cashmere, made a post about YouTube banning videos making fun of Thailand’s king — light stuff compared to what us Americans see of George Bush.

Would Pete be arrested if he ever visited Thailand? Punishment for insulting the King is up to 15 years in prison.

You never know what forum or blog posts you wrote may be dug up, or have even been indexed and noted by a foreign country that does not value human rights or free speech. That really sucks for bloggers who enjoy traveling.

I have been really busy since returning from New York, so I have not had a chance to test the new AOL Search Marketplace yet. At Search Engine Strategies Yahoo had a booth and did a drawing for a free Mini Cooper to promote it. I was suprised to have heard nothing of it before this (may be I am living in a shell, but I read quite a few blogs.)

Previously, Adwords ads were syndicated through AOL.com. You really did not have an option whether to target them specifically or exclude them. So whats the big deal here? The deal is, in my experience, AOL has exceptionally strong conversions. In other words, you can now target AOL specifically and make bids based on AOL.com conversion data. Previously you were, in effect, bidding on a “pile” of traffic with AOL included. This may even allow you to drop your Adwords bids to make up for fewer conversions.

AOL Search Marketplace uses Google Adwords technology behind it. Officially, its a Adwords white labelled solution. This means you won’t be using a buggy and/or crippled piece of garbage like MSN and Yahoo have been in the past.

Add this to your list of high quality PPC traffic sources: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and now AOL. On the downside, it does not appear to be publicly available yet. They probably want to give eBay and Amazon a chance before getting bombarded by ringtone affiliates.

Google has had a massive impact on the web. Between organic listings, Adsense, and Adwords, Google has minted many six figure incomes and millionaires. The money is there are its going to be for years to come.

Unfortunately its not all a happy field of flowers. Having a handful of top organic listings driving 90% of your sales, combined with a warehouse and employees is a high risk venture. The good news is diversified entrepreneurs are less susceptible to these fluctuations.

Between launching a questionable quality score in Adwords to announcements that buying links makes your a spammer, Google’s karma has taken quite a hit in the past year. The whole part about storing massive quantities of user data and going on billion dollar spending binges has some wondering if Sergey and Larry will overtake Bill Gates as computing’s Darth Vader.

Regardless, relying on Google for your livelihood sucks. Here are a few ways you can help avoid algorithm catastrophes — paid and organic.

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