Minstrel, I used to think you were one of the more fair and reasonable people on the forums. I confess that your support of Wayne and continued harping on this "invisible text" thing surprises me. There was some little bit of navigational text that was written in CSS in part of her frame. She didn't know it was there. I didn't know it was there. She didn't write it, I didn't write it. I didn't even SEE it. The original designer of the site from years ago apparently put it on there, and it was even said on Matt's blog that there was no excessive list of keywords or spamming...it was just some navigational stuff. Neither one of us has any useful knowledge of CSS and couldn't "hide" something if we wanted to...which we don't and never have. The whole accusation is ludicrous. That is our point. We aren't distracting from anything...when he brought it to her attention, she removed it. Why don't you take the job and let her pay YOU to go over the whole site and see if you see something else like that? We don't know what to look for! I have never practiced anything but white hat and don't have enough smarts to do it any other way. Heck, it took Wayne several years of looking to find it too! If you know how to spot things like that, then HELP her. There is nothing to condemn here. I feel sure that Frontpage doesn't offer a drag and drop way to spam search engines. And that's all I have to say too. You're burning the Christians instead of the witches here. Jan
I'm just puzzled by the way both of you are dodging the issues. What is the relationship between luvdavy, VegasAgent, and the DMOZ editor?
You would probably not see a rapist and someone who gets a jay walking ticket both being prosecuted with the same vigor. I thought "no" was an answer. No means it is not someone who is an editor at DMOZ who is also a friend who has kept everyone else out of DMOZ. I do not know anyone at DMOZ. It is probably a friend but I could not tell you the relationship. I was not online when this was posted and have not seen this user name before.
Sorry was eating and watched a Movie, by the way FlightPlan is killer, rent it. Yes I do it says All Rights Reserved, I believe. That is a phrase I want to hide using hidden text Probably, this link farm they have is pretty powerful, no kidding. It wouldnt surprise me in the least if one of their webmasters or one of the Realtors was an editor at Dmoz, but this is only speculation. It is what made your site rank well to begin with, now on the other hand you have this massive link farm and your site has aged. Those are the only two things that keep your site # 1 in Google. 3 years ago if you had not had all those hidden links plus hidden text, you would not be where you are at today cause no one would have linked to you as they have now because of your top rankings. This is really not important, its water under the bridge, but I believe that not only Google but also others who placed you on a pedestal should know how you got those positions. You told me in Matts blog, I should wait my turn that you had to. Well if I spammed as you did maybe I wouldnt have to wait to long. You have stated before that you are a very ethical person, yet where are the ethics in using techniques that are against the search engines guidelines, where are the ethics of placing your link partners so far down your homepage that they get no credit for these links, where is the ethics in creating a link but not using the complete text to target that key phrase. Talk about ethics, just like the time you called Century 21 Corp and told them I wasnt licensed and was running a website with their trademark, this was when you were with a C 21 office. Its funny I get a cease and desist but when I called on that letter they checked my license and found out I was licensed with C 21, you shortly left C 21 after that for another company. So lets not get in to ethics. We all make mistakes, me included, but I have not nor ever will use spam techniques to gain rankings with my website or use unethical techniques to take advantage of those whom I link with or lie to those I have a business relationship with to screw my competitors. To offer proof of your actions, what has happen to those who have wanted to link with others in Vegas in the past that are linked with you Diann? Do they get removed from your link farm or do you send an email to your partners asking them to remove those links, if they refuse you act like a child and threaten to remove their links..please tell me I am lying. I know someone now that will post to this effect. Diann you have called me a spammer for quite sometime and yet you still cant understand how these were hidden links had nothing to do with your navigation. Your site is old, I am sure you have forgot a lot of things that was done to that site to begin with, it is there however. People are not as gullible as some of your link partners and its not their fault, cause they just dont know any better. They take your word for it cause you have the rankings which give you credibility, they just dont realize how you got those rankings. Let me address this once. Yes there was copied text from her website, she did contact me. I told her that I did not do this and it was done by one of my webmasters. I was in the process of moving from Las Vegas to Florida. I told her that I would remove it as soon as I got settled. I get to Florida and whats the first thing I have in my email address. Emails from a lot of people she was emailing calling me a thief and unethical. Now this was in just 6 days not 30. After I found out about this and this was my mistake, I refused to remove and showed my ass, what it right ...NO but I was fed up with her accusations. I did this just to make her go that exdtra step to have me remove it, it wasnt right but we make mistakes. The funny thing about this issue was when she called me I tried to offer her info on some Seo, things I saw she was doing wrong at that time. While she was on the phone with me she was telling me thank you and how nice I was for offering this information, but wow as soon as your back is turned, get ready to pull that knife out of it. My best advice Diann, get rid of the homepage links, get rid of the hidden text, get rid of the duplicate framed and non framed pages and comb your site, you still have some spam left that you forgot about.
No dodging here. Jan and I became friends over the past few years of working on the Internet and meeting at SEO conventions. We trade real estate referrals, ideas and personal advice on men. There is no DMOZ editor (though that is how rumors get started.) What else would you like to know?
You don't know JustTheFacts? He/she sure seems to know you. And She/he sure seems to have some inside knowledge of DMOZ: and later:
I can tell you Jan and her are friends, they have been for a long time. Jan visits Vegas to see Diann some. As for this other person I have a good idea who it is but will not say. If I am right and Dmoz takes offense to this persons statements maybe they will deal with it. Give it a day or so and I bet there will be some of her link partners coming in to defend her. The problem is how do you defend blackhat Seo.
Diann, this whole thing is a big waste of time and is playing right into Wayne's little game. I suggest we both move on and let him run his mouth all he wants. Maybe we can find someone on Webmaster World or Doug Heil's forum that will let you pay them to go over the site and double-check for anything else that might be stuck somewhere. Obviously nobody here wants to help...they are just playing games. Wayne, until Google decides our links are bad and lets us know, we aren't about to change anything. You can stomp up and down and call it a link farm and cry and throw rocks from now on...it's not your call. So far Matt doesn't have a problem with it. When he does, I guess we'll all know. Jan
I am little confused about your answer since JustTheFacts, who ever he or she is, has only 3 post and 2 of those post are in your defense. JustTheFacts refers to you as Diann and also knows about you moving from one agency to another and what has happened to your DMOZ listing as posted here, but you claim not to know this person. This person is very familiar with DMOZ policies also and place a link to DMOZ policy in the posting and mentions that Las Vegas Homes will never get a listing in DMOZ as posted here. In light of those 2 postings, you still post that you don't know who this person is and you don't have any friend in DMOZ, don't you think that the whole thing sounds very strange?
You are right Jan. The problem is however that you have been flying under the radar for a long time. Now with the issues of spam techniques being used and exposed, I am sure Google will take a closer look. You, Diann and maybe some of your link partners know this link farm is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate Googles serps. Hell ask some of your link partners why they removed the homepage links. Boy I wish I lived in Missouri right now.
there is no secret on where everything is on my home page and my link partners all seem to be happy as we also trade actual referrals I don't even understand what you are saying here you weren't licensed with them when you started the site and it took them a good three months to get around to the cease and desist. and after that you registered as "James" not Wayne. you were also using the IDX link of another broker which is illegal and which they also made you remove I left about a year later and they are still trying to get me to come back! we started a group whose goal was to link with only one agent in each city and do the referrals - you know as in real estate referrals - which was the whole point of the exercise. anyone who wanted to be in that group abided by the rules. or they were free to leave and form their own group He never said it was one of his web masters - he said he did not have time to write new copy as he was moving and that he had just thrown the site up to have something ready when he got there. And he was moving to Atlanta not Florida. It was actually almost 45 days because I had forgotten about it. When I called him again on it he said I could not do anything about it across state lines and that he was a lawyer and I could not sue him. Yes he did on that first call and was actually pretty cordial. It was the second call after 45 days that he turned around and said he was not taking the content down. Shall we get Mack in on this? Or how about a couple of your previous web masters? how about that attorney you tried to say was your client at the Cosmopolitan? okay - that is truly enough said about the whole thing - have a nice life Wayne, I will not allow you to waste any more of my time.
I am sure it is probably a friend and obviously it is someone who knows about DMOZ rules and has bothered to read the regulations. I just said I did not recognize the user name - I am sure I will find out whenever they post again or perhaps they will PM me! Obviously this person knows me and that I switched from Century 21 and it could easily be one of half a dozen people, I just do not know who because I was away from the computer - hopefully that is clear enough?
Do you mean that there is a possibility that this friend of yours is a DMOZ editor but you don't know which one of your friends it is?
As stated, They dont know any better, they dont understand how you are listed high on their homepage which google is counting that link to you, but your links are so far down that google only spiders up to 100 links, they are way past that and it doesnt give them credit for the link. Speaking of Mack I believe he has told you the samething. If its for referrals why not place nofollow tags on the links so the search engines dont count those towards your link count or is there another reason? Maybe to manipulate the serps? Also please explain why those of you in the link farm have these links with the same anchor text on multiple pages? Why not just create a page called referral partners. This way consumers can go to these pages and see nothing but information on other real estate partners? LOL Diann, we all know referrals are important, but we can also see through the BS and everybody here including yourself knows these links are meant to help your rankings and nothing more. The second call after 45 days was after I found out you had been bad mouthing me, which by then I was already pissed so I wasnt going to be cordial. Ws it a mistake sure but dont play with fire unless you dont expect to get burn. Sure lets bring Mack in, as a matter of fact let me IM him in the morning to post. As for that attorney, whether you know it or not, that attorney called me and had me write up a reservation agreement for a unit. I am not saying it was deliberate you sent him to me to waste my time but we know how clients can be. Why would he be calling me if he was your client and happy with your services? You as well Diann, enjoy your retirement, you deserve it.. BTW one last piece of advice. Be nicer to your agents, because I had a call 3 weeks ago from one looking for a new team to join and they are not happy with you.
See Diann this is one of my points I made earlier. If things dont go your way, you act like my 6 year old. You might not believe me about this agent but maybe in time you will find out when they leave your team and join mine. I would like to tell you who, but I will wait and let them. I also dont think Gworlds question is to stupid to respond to. He is asking if you know who this person is, since they seem to know you on a personal level. They know a lot about you. They have referenced things on this thread and another that only a close personal friend would know.
Well I guess I have been invited to respond to this thread. Let me start by saying that I like Diann, Jan and Wayne. While I have never met any of the three we have been in the same circles for some time now. I am also a competitor of Diann and Wayne in the Las Vegas Market. The grudge between Diann and Wayne has been going on for a couple of years now and Jan and I are periodically drug into it. The difference between Jan and I is that when asked I can be a bit more objective due to her close relationship with Diann. That being said, loyalty and friendship are good qualities, not bad. Let’s just keep to the facts here. 1) Yes I had a bad experience with Wayne. He has publicly and privately apologized and as a Christian I am obligated to forgive him. 2) Yes Wayne copied content from Diann’s website a couple of years ago (old news). 3) Yes Diann slams Wayne about the copied content still. 4) Yes Wayne found hidden text and hidden links on Diann’s website recently. 5) Diann removed the hidden links and text. 6) Wayne claims that Diann runs a link farm on her home page and that her link partners are getting screwed due to Google’s policy of NOT indexing over 100 links and her “Referral Partners†links start at about 90 links deep (last count) on her home page.Wayne has admitted that he kept content taken from Diann just to show his ass. Knowing Wayne as I do, I can believe that. While confession is good for the soul he has NOT to my knowledge publicly apologized to Diann. If he were to do so, all of this might stop. Like I said, this is old news. Diann claims she has removed all of the hidden text and hidden links left over by a former webmaster. She has also asked for assistance in this thread by SEO experts and is willing to pay for it. Until proven otherwise Diann must be given the benefit of the doubt IMHO. God knows that we have all used tactics in the past that are no longer acceptable and are now considered to be “spamâ€. If you believe Google’s Webmaster Guideline’s about the 100 link maximum per page, then Wayne is correct about the majority of Diann’s link partners are NOT getting any benefit from Diann and that she has basically a “one way†link from them to her site. Diann and I have discussed this. However, I believe that if this is the case and Diann receives evidence or affirmation from other sources that she will correct this too as a matter of ethics, not SEO. After reading this thread, my main concern was the post by JustTheFacts. As was pointed out by minstrel and gworld, something is not right. DMOZ would be well serverd to look at which editor changed Diann’s listing last and see if the same editor has removed or deleted other Las Vegas Real Estate sites. I would also suggest to DMOZ to see if that same editor has edited any of Diann’s link partners. I am not suggesting that there is any wrong doing by Diann. The fault of any wrong doing would go to the DMOZ editor involved. But like others in this thread, I feel that JustTheFacts knows way to much about what is going on with Diann’s site and shows an obvious bias to Wayne. As a mater of fact all 3 Posts in this Forum by JustTheFacts are directed against Wayne. I would also be interested to see if the same DMOZ editor that removed www.vegas4sale.net was the same editor that changed Diann’s listing. ~VegasMack
Let me address this part: It isn't just a question of whether Google ignores more than 100 links on a page. It's also a question of simple mathematics. Example: Let's say that Diann has a links page with PR5 (I have no idea if this is true - I've never visited the site). If she has 10 outgoing links on the site, the PageRank passed via each of those outgoing links is .425 (.85 * PR /(#outgoing links)). If she has 100 outgoing links, the passed PR value is .0425 - getting close to zero. Any more than 100, if Google indexes any of them, and the passed PR value drops even further (for 200, passed PR=.02; for 300, passed PR=.014, etc.). Thus, regardless of whether or not Google will index that many links, the value to the recipient is essentially nil. Additionally, a page containing that many outgoing links is very likely to be seen as a "link farm", in which case the outgoing links may well be devalued or discounted entirely. I agree completely. My other concern was with what seemed to be avoidance or dissumlation on Diann's part when asked about her relationship with JustTheFacts, but perhaps I am being overly suspicious.
You have a very broad definition of spam... I usualy build a noframes version of any frames page as a matter of accessibility. Its just good sense. All without ever intending to manipulate search engines. If you look at it that close then any link propagation at all would be spam. People without any concern for rankings at all would be penalized for innocence. There is a such thing as overkill...