Google and Max Zorin, Bond baddies set on world domination

With the launch of the first mobile using Google's Android software it got me thinking how far Google have managed to infiltrate our lives. With Android, it's a further invasion into my everyday life, Google will be following me away from my computer and into my pocket (if i have a mobile with Android of course).

This gradual world domination reminded me of someone, a James Bond villain, back in the days when Bond villains were psychopathic and wanted power more than money, it was Max Zorin. Don't follow me? Let me elaborate with bios for both Google and Zorin:

Max Zorin	Google
Profile
Born 31 March 1943, in Dresden, as a product of Nazi medical experimentation during World War II, in which pregnant women were injected with massive quantities of steroids in an attempt to create "super-children." The few babies that survived grew to become extraordinarily intelligent — but also psychopathic with manic blood lust and unpredictable mood swings.	Born in January 1996, as a product of experimentation during Larry Page's research project, in which search engines were injected with massive quantities of backlinks in an attempt to create a "super search engine." Initial experiment 'backrub' was killed off to create Google, an extraordinarily comprehensive web giant - but also psychopathic with manic start-up company acquisition lust.
Well spoken and extraordinarily intelligent, but with a sharp temper and a clinical background, Zorin rose to become a powerful businessman in the microchip market bent on crippling his competition and forming a monopoly.	A corporate philosophy based on the principle that you can make money without doing evil, but with privacy concerns and cookie abuse, Google expanded quickly through a total of 53 acquisitions, crippling their competition and being accused of monopoly.
His business dealings are shady, to say the least, and the villain will brutally close a business deal if ever negotiations do not go his way.	Their business dealings are shady, to say the least.
His wealth is undisputable and associates with a range of businessmen from a variety of countries to gamble on the most unlikely investments - often with outstandingly lucrative consequences.	Their wealth is undisputable with total equity of over US$22 billion and over 19,000 employees from a variety of countries to gamble on the most unlikely investments - often with outstandingly lucrative consequences.
Despite his massive entourage, Zorin harbours a compromising secret - he has been informing on the UK and American governments; passing information to the KGB in exchange for a silent helping hand in business.	Despite their massive entourage, Google harbour a compromising secret - personal data on anyone who has ever walked within 6 feet of an online computer; possible worries over passing personal search data to girlfriends, close friends and your mum.
Scheme
In the hopes of casting a massive monopoly on the US and global microchip production, Zorin plans Operation Mainstrike to afflict a "natural" disaster by flooding the San Andreas fault, which runs under Silicon Valley, the world's primary source of microchips.	In the hopes of casting a massive monopoly on the US and global digital world, Google plans Operation Googleplex to ensure every digital item from mobile phones, to video, to software is Google-ised taking out Microsoft, the world's primary source of digital domination.
Zorin attempts to buy off Sutton Oil and even the executives at San Francisco City Hall in order to conduct his manic plan. Unfortunately, his lust for winning and dirty cheating at horse racing leaves him open to suspicion by the Jockey Association and in turn, MI6.	Google attempts to buy off Viacom and even the Scottish Premier League in order to conduct their manic plan. Unfortunately, their lust for winning and dirty eating at the donut store leave them open to suspicion by the Jockey Association and in turn, the U.S. district court judge.
007 uncovers a trail of dodgy deals, rash and ruthless buy-outs and even murders - all in aid of furthering his manic lust for death and destruction.	Felix Lighter, to this point a character in the left hand side of this table, flicks between narratives and uncovers a trail of dodgy deals, rash and ruthless buy-outs and even April Fool's Day jokes - all in aid of furthering their manic lust for world domination.
Zorin's plan is foiled by Bond and Zorin's former lover and henchman May Day, who joins Bond's side after Zorin attempts to kill her and his men and sacrifices her life to ensure that the bomb set by Zorin could not trigger the quake.	Google's plan is foiled by Lighter and Google's former lover and henchman Yahoo!, who joins Lighter's side after Google attempts to kill it and its exclamation mark and sacrifices its life by joining Microsoft to ensure world domination can not be completed.
Zorin is later killed in a confrontation with Bond, when he falls into the waters of San Francisco Bay from one of the support cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.	Google is later killed in a confrontation with Lighter, when it falls off its home page and lands as a footer on MSN search.
Gadgets
Beyond the chateau, Zorin travels in style, onboard attention grabbing zeppelins - the largest of which is fitted out with a very expansive boardroom, sleeping quarters for all and a nasty staircase that sees disagreeable business associates slide to their death.	Beyond the Googleplex with its giant rubber balls, swimming pools, dinosaurs and spaceships, Google travels in style, onboard attention grabbing architecture - the Zurich base of which is fitted out with a very expansive boardroom, sleeping quarters for all and a nasty staircase that sees disagreeable business associates and hungry employees slide to lunch.
Personal appearance
Blonde hair	White background
Blue eyes	Blue gees, red oh and ees, yellow oh and green el
Quotes
"For centuries alcemists tried to make gold from base metals. Today, we make microchips from silicon, which is common sand, but far better than gold."	"Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply." - Sergey Brin
"You discharged her, so she and her accomplice came here to kill you. Then they set fire to the office, to conceal the crime but they were trapped in the elevator and perished in the flames."	"We are currently not planning on conquering the world." - Sergey Brin
Sources: Bio lovingly nicked from Wiki and Bond fansite. Quotes nabbed from IMDB.	Sources: Bio fabricated with the help of Google, Wiki and my fertile imagination. Quotes nabbed from here.

Obviously this is all completely untrue and inaccurate, besides, Google will return in...

Moontaker, The World Is Not Enough

"From the most exotic locations on Earth, Google will take you out of this world!"

Related pages
Don't let Google boss your website around
Should Google News pay publishers for their content?

Manipulate the BBC's most emailed stories

The BBC's 'most emailed' stories is based on very small numbers. So small in fact that by emailing yourself a few times you can manipulate the results, apparently...

I read about this in the latest issue of New Scientist (scroll half way down the page to “Rigging the ranking”).

Chris McManus in the above article managed to get an old story to appear at number 4 by emailing himself 5 times. I've just tried this (albeit at 10am, which may be a relatively busy time) and emailed a random story to 12 different people and it hasn't appeared.

I would say this sort of manipulation is clearly on the wrong side of the SEO law so i'm not going to recommend it but it's interesting nevertheless to see that a site as large as the BBC still only has very small figures to make up it's most emailed stories, if McManus' story is indeed true.

Looking at this on Wikipedia provides a link to a PDF article from the International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security called Statistics Hacking - Exploiting Vulnerabilities in News Websites (by Amrinder Arora) which identified BBC vulnerabilities back in March 2007. There must be spammers out there capable of manipulating this on a large scale, hiding their proxy, using multiple emails e.t.c.

I can't imagine the BBC are oblivious to this even though they have left it for over a year so i'll let you know if they come knocking on my door.

Related posts
BBC increase most read stories to top 10
Online popularity culture is killing good journalism - writing content for the benefit of most read and most emailed widgets
Feedjit widget provides your site's most popular pages

Remove an O from the Google logo

So Google becomes Gogle with a simple bit of URL playing. This is originally in a great post on SEOmoz.

UPDATE: They've fixed this, it no longer works as of May 2009 :(

1. Type anything into google search.
2. When you get your result append the following to the end of the URL string:
   &num=100&start=990
3. Then watch as Google drops an O out of its logo (the logo at the bottom of the page).

Google's link: operator not an accurate backlink checker

Don't use Google's link: operator to get your backlink count. Use Yahoo Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Tools.

This may be due to my own SEO naivety but up until recently I trusted the link: operator from the standard Google search to be providing me with a list of mine (or my competitors') backlinks. However I read the following on SEOmoz today:

"...Google made their link query useless in 2003 and MSN disabled theirs earlier this year."

I recoiled in shock that nobody ever told me this and set out to find out the truth.

The official word on this from Google's Matt Cutts reinforces the pointlessness of the Google link: operator:

"The link: command has always returned a small fraction of the backlinks that Google knows about, mainly for historical reasons (e.g. limited disk space on the machines that served up “link:” data)."

So how do I accurately measure backlinks?

• Yahoo Site Explorer - Any SEO expert worth their salt points straight to Yahoo Site Explorer as the king of backlinks because unlike Google Webmaster Tools you can check competitor backlinks.
  Other services include export result to TSV, exclude on include internal links, search specific URLs.
  It doesn't prioritise link weighting and it also includes links designated 'nofollow'.

• Google Webmaster Tools - A really tidy backlink checker that lists backlinks per page that you can look at and download. Your site has to be validated on Google Webmaster Tools to access this so you can't check competitor sites.
  Like Yahoo it doesn't prioritise link weighting and it also includes links designated 'nofollow'.
  

For my blog URL the results of each tool can be seen below:

Backlink checker	Number of links
Yahoo Site Explorer	20
Google Webmaster Tools	25
Google Link: operator	1

As you can see there was still variation between Google and Yahoo. A quick look showed that Google had picked up a few more links from Technorati than Yahoo did. Despite this, either tool will provide an accurate measure of trends – whether you are getting more or less backlinks each month and how quickly they are accumulating.

There are other backlink checkers out there but I’m just mentioning these two as these seem to be the most accurate from all the sites I’ve visited. If you know of others, please let me know.

Also an honourable mention to this extensive analysis of external links I found on my travels.

Increase Google page rank by domain commitment & love

Domain strength or commitment is essential to improve your Google ranking. But there's no quick fix, this is the one bit of SEO that can only be fixed by time and patience.

Google's algorithm is always going to be a mystery, like the ingredients of Coca Cola or how Colonel Sanders gets his chicken so crispy. Many have had a crack at figuring it out, in fact I keep coming back to a SEOmoz article from two years ago which although just a guess is likely to highlight the main factors in the Google algorithm.

At the heart of it all is the mystical page rank but I won't talk about that. What I want to look at here is the oft forgotten 'domain strength' or your commitment to the web. It's unclear quite how important Google believes this to be but I’ve been reminded about it by various respected SEO professionals at a couple of conferences so far this year. And the SEOmoz article above puts it on a par with inbound links.

What Google sees as commitment is your site's importance to a particular subject over time using the following criteria:

• History: How long has your URL existed online
• Future planning: How long is your URL bought for / got remaining
• Consistency: Has the site provided the same information for its entire history. If you try and change the focus of a site Google may not like you.
  
  • Extreme example: Don't have a site selling cars for 5 years than change the same domain to a site about how to care for children.
  • Also it's worth checking the previous usage of any domains you buy to find out what they have been used for previously as well as whether they might be associated with spam / banned from search engines. There are a number of ways to discover your domain history.
• Authenticity: Are you trying to cheat or spam search engines in any way? Whatever you do with your website be honest to the search engines - if it was previously a spam site, tell them and ask for re-inclusion. Be patient, pick a good domain then stick at it for many years.
  

Like a good relationship, your love-in with Google can only improve with age.