Classic Car Catalogue closes over copyright claim

One of the reasons Keith Adams sold AROnline, a site that he put decades into, was someone alleging he had infringed copyright over a photograph. So he paid up. But for long-term survival, he turned to the team at Great British Car Journey, who had deeper pockets, as AROnline was in danger of closing down. […]

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Keep your corner of the ’net clean

There is a lot of disinformation when it comes to politics—and now you know why it was important for me to get rid of the disinformation about me. No, it’s not because anything written about me could have affected an election. But it is about a medium that takes effort to stay clean and usable, […]

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The new disinformation posts may have stopped, but there’s tidying to do

In the businesses I’m actually involved in, there aren’t that many unsavoury people. Maybe in the early to mid-2000s I came across some hangers-on in the fashion world. But SEO, wow, there’s a great deal of unscrupulousness. I’ve seen their con-merchant emails since the late 1990s—all the more reason that being grouped as one of […]

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Here’s probably how Semrush linked concepts—and got it totally wrong

When you have been on this disinformation-busting journey for nine months, you can work out how Semrush got everything so wrong. Here’s one item, a bunch of SEO tools, and if you read the description, ‘Google SEO Xiaoyan’ is in the copy. Probably deeply questionable, which is why Google offers it for Chrome.     […]

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The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost

Here’s a company that seems to protect sploggers and disinformation spreaders: Bluehost. One of the disinformation splogs had a Cloudflare account, which hid their real host. I filed a DMCA report, as this splogger was stupid enough to use my photo. These seem to get through the Cloudflare system better than things classified as ‘other’. […]

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Semrush finally explains how my (unspaced) name wound up in their system

Posting on Reddit has elicited something from Semrush, with Vic on their team writing this in response to me.     Hi Jack, sorry for any confusion—I’ve been discussing the case with my team internally to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our system aims to predict trends using various signals, but sometimes […]

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Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’

From a user on Reddit, _cth_. Need I say more? Semrush doesn’t care about how bad their product is, or the effect it has on the public.     Here’s someone paying US$14,000 per month for junk, so imagine how bad the data must be for the free or lower-paying users. I would be surprised […]

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Carry on designing

Journeys through time are fascinating. Earlier this week, I looked at some of the websites we liked from the Jack Yan & Associates links’ section. In many cases, it was a trip down memory lane, as some sites still had their 2000s layouts. Sadly, this could mean that a few of them will disappear in […]

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Bringing the JY&A links’ pages into the 2020s

After 21–2 years, we’ve redone the links’ pages on the Jack Yan & Associates website. The old template dated from 2002, and, oddly, while cellphone browsers from a decade ago could by default enlarge the type to suit, modern ones can’t. (I’m still waiting for the software developers to incorporate the Bitstream technology from the […]

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More disinformation sploggers point to Semrush

More disinformation sploggers have owned up and blamed Semrush, not that they are taking their posts down. The latest: Hope you are doing well. First of all we are extremely sorry for using the keyword related to your name. We only use this as a keyword. According to the semrush this keyword has potential of […]

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