Sooooo Mr Cutts has given us a “special spam report” probably because penguin 2.0 was essentially a steaming pile of cr*p which if anything made the search results worse.

So once again Google are asking us to do their job for you and this

Here’s a special spam report form: bit.ly/penguinspamrep… Please tell us about the spammy sites that Penguin missed.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 23, 2013

is of course in no way open to abuse……

Oh wait what am I saying of course it is. So assuming they use this data and you just scraped through penguin not for long.

So I’ve been thinking for a while about why I got into search. And my answer much like everyone else I meet is I just sort of fell into it. And later decided that I actually liked what I did.

Now my story involves being drunk, an elevator, a pizza and a series of chance happenings that eventually resulted in me winding up at Blueclaw and specialising in gambling. There was no plan involved, just a series of seemingly random events culminating in a career in online marketing.

This is what’s wrong with Search Marketing. Maybe 1 in 1000 people get into it because they really want to, the guys in social do it because they want to, designers because they want to, us search guys…. Well it just sort of happens. I’ve been asking this question for years at every conference I go to, and to everyone I meet in search and only 1 person has ever answered “because I wanted to be an SEO” and I have my suspicions as to whether or not that was actually true.

As a gambling SEO and marketer, I do often get tarred with a black hat brush, and I’m not going to lie, if a client wants black hat, then they’ll get black hat. Is that all I do, no. Is this post mostly going to be a bit of a rant to vent my frustrations with the overuse of questions which I answer myself? More than likely.

Well, I recently sat on a panel in Barcelona with Dave Naylor and we had something of a spirited discussion about this, now he had a little bit more info on this one than I did having been a Beta tester. I was actually a little sceptical as to whether or not we’d ever actually see the thing, he on the other hand granted knew better.

And now that it is here I have to wonder whether or not we will see any real changes from this, the tool itself in my eyes is not going to be our silver bullet, it will most certainly not be a get out of jail free card.

This is basically a rant, but if you’ve employed/interviewed grads recently you’ll be hugely depressed about how Uni’s really don’t have a bloody clue about the online sector. And I’m sure we’ll have all heard this somewhere. So; if you’re a marketing grad before going into a digital agency to work there for an interview or any marketing related interview read this list. Please! I do need to mention that not all grads do this just these are things that I have heard over the last 2 months and have really grated on my nerves.

This isn’t solely aimed at grads it’s also for those marketing managers out there that don’t get digital marketing, the ones who haven’t caught up with the new era as it were. You know who you are and yes you drive everyone who consults for you insane.

This is meant as tongue in cheek although in fairness…. It may not be as much of a joke as I wish it was, some agencies are actually like this. And you may feel somewhat like Fry in the pic to the left after talking to your AM.