I tried using gmail for forwarding: info@domain.com > username@gmail.com > shelley@domain.com(IMAP). But when a legit mail went into the gmail spam folder, “Not Spamming” it of course didn’t synch it w/ shelley@domain.com, and I had to manually forward it from username@gmail.com which gets messy & confusing to all. So using MailWasher was more efficient.

However, once I set the gmail IMAP account up in Tbird, I copied a year’s worth of incoming & outgoing mail from her domain.com IMAP account on to gmail folders (labels appear as folders) and she’s off to the races w/o noticing a change(very important!). Incidentally, I set her’s up to have her mail account forward only (no mailbox) to her gmail account, then in Tbird, I set her email address to shelley@domain.com so it looks like it’s coming from there.

Now I can monitor her spam from a browser,Tbird or cell phone, “Not Spam” it, and it pops back into her Tbird Inbox real-time. Conversely, I can “Report Spam” from the same devices to keep her Inbox clean like I did w/ MailWasher, but Google does most of the work now and I hopefully gain another hour a day for more productive endeavours. I’ve been using Gmail almost since its launch, and there is no easier, cheaper spam mail filter out there for my needs. It’s still technically in BETA, but in my experience, they filter email spam as well as they filter SE spam–not perfect by any means, but better than anybody else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ22euWXYog

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75725

The logo could use a bit of optimizing for tiny thumbnails but having just Google’s and my logo on the page is pretty cool, even if I didn’t really mean to.

Now I have an all-new opportunity to work on the unique challenges of the vertical and local search space at Zillow.

Making the move was a very difficult decision, but the challenge of creating something new in a space that’s so young and evolving was too great to pass up.

http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2007/06/14/a-few-changes/

Brett over at WW posted a few years ago that mostly all he did was check referrers. I thought, man, that’s nuts or he’s lying. Now I get it. And checking referrers for a real estate site is quick–work and really reminds you of where your efforts need to be focused for the long haul. Filling that list with authority sites that sometimes beat out the search engines in daily referrals is the goal.

When do I check keywords now?

-New website/occasional page, fun to see it Hello World into the SERPs

-Blog posts/comments, interesting to watch these days, ranking can be counted in seconds sometimes

-When Google (sometimes Y!/MSN) makes a move that makes it on to the forums. Then if nothing’s moving on my main terms, it’s back-to-work. If there’s major movement on keyphrases that haven’t budged often over the years, then perhaps it’s worth throwing a few hours at it.

When juggling RE & SEM, it’s all about shaving time off of compounding daily tasks that must be done. If you’re averaging more than a few minutes a day checking keywords these days, you probably don’t have enough posts/comments/websites/clients to respond to. Psst, it’s not all about anchor text anymore anyway.

My Webmaster Tools link isn’t where it used to be (”My Account” is a bit confusing now, a first for Google & me) so I searched “google webmaster tools”, and there’s the 5-star spam general at #3, reaching out to webmasters with a headshot vid grab as his image, a nice instructional video, and some oh so subtle, inexpensive marketing finesse. Think he’s spanking the #1 and #2 spots for click-throughs?

You know how Akismet always shows the last few thousand spams it has blocked? After months of using the SpamBam plugin it still says “Akismet (0)”. Clear out Akismet and install this plugin: when they say “No more comment spam” they mean it, and all you do is install and forget: SpamBam

Site slow? Another good one is Bad Behavior. A few good must-haves are here also.

For example, she did a post on trail trees this morning. I made a cup of coffee and searched for bear face trail tree. Well what do you know, there’s the root at the top of page two (of course it could drop or move up). And note that keyword-rich title tag.

Granted they’re only showing the root and not the actual post yet, and results will vary based upon the domain and the competitiveness of the search, but Bear face trail tree is nicely highlighted, and it’s the right up top of the blog when they arrive. Not saying it works every time; it doesn’t, but things are obviously heading in that direction. Something to show your sellers in five minutes? I’ll take it.

Is this a blog-specific phenomenon? Feed-specific? It’s been so long since I uploaded/tested a new static page.

An penalized Advanced Access user informed me that by removing his state pages and doing a reinclusion request, his site is starting to appear again in the Google SERPs (only 2 weeks post-penalty). I would think that this approach would work for other affected template sites.

Although it’s pretty much confirmed that this was a hand-edit by both Yahoo and then Google, there’s evidence that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as other non-AA websites using this spam technique are doing forum posts about being dropped by the search engines. Other sites using this method have seen a significant portion of their indexed pages go into Google’s supplemental results, as was warned by Google engineer Matt Cutts in his Google Hell blog post:

As Google changes algorithms over time, excessive reciprocal links will probably carry less weight. That could also account for a site having more pages in supplemental results if excessive reciprocal links (or other link-building techniques) begin to be counted less.

The owner of Advanced Access has spoken to Google and they assured him that he wasn’t being singled-out, there’s more to come, and the only way for agents to recover their rankings is to delete their state pages and do a reinclusion request. Incidentally, agents using Advanced Access templates without engaging in reciprocal linking were apparently not hit, so the fault lies with the agents or their webmasters, not the template company.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. This is huge for the industry as well over half of all agents’ websites I’ve reviewed use this technique; frankly, if I had to put a number on it, I’d say over 80% of the sites I’ve looked at over the years. The domino effect will be staggering to say the least.

Since day-one, I’ve deleted or ignored every link exchange request I’ve received from other agents, and I was often asked why and usually offered only a smile. Now you have my answer.

Did you find a listing on realestateblueridge.com / ngmls.com that had bad or misleading information (says “lakefront” but it’s not, misrepresentation of photos, etc.)?

Please post any feedback as a comment.