Google’s efforts to go after offender’s using abusive techniques to rank high on the list of search results is good.  Everyone knows that first page placement is where is it.  Without it why bother marketing on-line?

Matt Cutts, Google’s Chief SPAM fighter, recently posted an entry on Google’s “official blog” regarding abuse within Google search results.  Last week’s news was dominated by “content farms” and actions Google took to expunge offender’s from search results.  The New York Times wrote an analysis on this a few weeks back.

Now onto one of the largest issues that Google has yet to address – Google’s local content.  This area provides local content based on your search terms.  For example, if the keywords “computer repair dallas tx” are used in a search the result lists a company in the fifth position (at the time of this entry) with the name “Geeks In Minutes – Computer Repair Dallas.”

The listing for “Geeks In Minutes” provides enough evidence proving the company is in violation of Google Places terms-of-service.  One of the rules is not listing fake business addresses.  That’s fairly straight-forward.  This example company has numerous fake listings.

Geeks In Minutes Dallas TX fake SPAM listing

Fake Listing for Geeks In Minutes of Washington DC

In these two examples the businesses appear as two different companies in two different geo-locations.  The names, addresses and website address are different.  Head on over to Who.is and enter in the respective domain names as follows: computerrepair-dallas.com and computerrepair-washington.com.  Notice the street address of the registrar “87 Bridge St” for both domains.  The physical address belongs to a completely different company.

Further evidence with the name “Geeks In Minutes” was located at “Ripoff Report.” (NOTE: we are in no way associated with the listed post nor ripoffreport.com).  It seems the company has a history and reputation that follows it.

We are pleased is Google’s is engaged in the crack-down of SPAM “content farms.”  Now if only Google would “crack” the whip on fake business listings.

Gawker’s website was recently busted into by crackers.  Username and passwords of the site were released to the public at large.

Needless to say, the lesson learned is pretty obvious.

Here are a few common rules as follows:

• Create passwords that are longer than six characters.
• Include a mix of uppercase, lowercase, special characters (!@#$%^&*), and numbers.
• Don’t use names, slang words, dictionary words, your e-mail address, birthdays, or trivial passwords.
• Use passphrases. A passphrase is a sentence that you condense into a password. For example, if your sentence is “Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are,” your password might be “Ttls#hIwwyr^”.
• Use a different password for every site you access.

Finally, PLEASE don’t place your passwords on a “post-it” note and then stick it to your monitor.

First and foremost we wish to apologize.  This week the website has gone through quite a “touch-and-go” process.  Everything went pretty well as scheduled and most of your objectives are now met.  There is minor maintenance issue on the administration side that doesn’t affect the website operationally.

Last week we began a transfer over to a new server.  The server provides better response.  A number of prerequisites were planned, deployed and achieved prior to the new site going into production.  Furthermore, this did cause some unexpected outages for a brief period of time.  The longest downtime was on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.  If you would like to drop us a line you can contact us here.

An entrepreneur is trying to sell his mother’s, a St. Louis, MO native, house that has been empty since the beginning of the recession.  The residence has fallen victim to the economic times.  Several attempts to sell and time has taken it’s toll by slowly draining his mom’s saving account.

The son, Christopher Simons, decided to roll up his sleeves and put on his marketing hat by creating a website.  Although the house has not sold as of November 18, 2009, he hopes the website will resolve the situation.  How’s that for taking ownership of a situation.

The website is very nice.  The design is clean and the layout shows it was created by an experienced developer.  PR Newswire pushed out a news release announcing the website.

We wish the entrepreneur success and hope the residence sells soon.  So, stimulate the economy St. Louis, breakout your computers and surf to this website to get your new home.

The West County Computer Center is offering free web design seminars at their open house.  The seminars will provide how to make better use of the web to communicate with customers and within the company between associates.

The seminars will offer hands-on training with both legacy and newer technologies to create and deploy a successful website.  The West County Computer Center, hosted by the University of Missouri, will hold the “Web Design Night” on Jan 28th at 6:00 p.m.

You can obtain further information at center’s website or call 314-984-9000.