Archive for January, 2013

Removing Poor Quality Content

My primary reason for starting this blog is that I want to keep track of SEO changes we made to our blogs. Google has disliked our blogs for a long time, and we get little to no search traffic from Google. More on this later, but today we deleted a lot of content to see if this can have a positive impact on our search engine rankings. As Google’s Michael Wyszomierski has stated previously: “Our recent update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, so the key thing for webmasters to do is make sure their sites are theContinue reading »

Generating More Facebook Countefeit Ads

Generating More Facebook Countefeit AdsI decided to visit the Facebook page of Coach to see what kinds of ads that would generate for me on Facebook. As you may know, Facebook advertisers generally target the interests of Facebook users. That I have visited the Coach Facebook page indicates that I am interested in handbags (despite being male). Not surprisingly, after visiting the Coach page, I started seeing ads like these: For some reason these ads to not provide the landing page URL, but clicking on them takes you to louis-vuitton-shop.net. It follows the same pattern as the other scam stores I have featured inContinue reading »

LoverSunglasses.com – Most Interesting Facebook Ad So Far

LoverSunglasses.com - Most Interesting Facebook Ad So FarIt seems like every time I have finished writing a blog post, Facebook decides to show me some more scam ads: I clicked on the advertisement, expecting yet again to find another scam site. However, I ended up on this site: I thought to myself; What is going on? Have the Facebook scammers finally learned how to do web design? A quick search shows that the domain was registered on January 22, 2013: Then I take another look at the website, and realize that they are simply in the process of copying the website of Warby Parker. Google still hasContinue reading »

Legalrayban.jp – Dumbest Domain Name Ever?

Legalrayban.jp - Dumbest Domain Name Ever?Today I noticed this Facebook advertisement for legalrayban.jp: For a change, the landing page today is actually the one indicated. Legalrayban.jp was registered for 1 year on January 20, 2013, by Lin WeiTian. The whois contact information lists a Japanese address and a Chinese phone number. As with all scam sites, the design is horrible and anyone should be able to see that the site is dubious at best: The contact information page gives [email protected] as the email address. A quick google search shows that this email is used on numerous other scam websites: I will report this one toContinue reading »

Facebook Hoax Back in New Disguise for Graph Search

Today I noticed an old Facebook hoax back in a new disguise following the arrival of Graph Search. It is essentially the same message that proliferated Facebook at the end of 2012 as this Forbes article describes in some detail. The new version of the hoax states: “With the launch of Facebook’s new Graph Search tool yesterday, this is even more important. For those of you who don’t know about Graph Search. There is no question that Graph Search opens up a number of new ways that your content can be discovered and used, including not only content you madeContinue reading »

Trying to Report the Oakley Scam – Failure

Trying to Report the Oakley Scam - FailureAs usual, I am a good citizen and decided to report this scam at the Oakley Website. Yesterday I completed the horrible form to report a different website, but today I decided to send an email to the contact address listed instead: Of course, the email address does not work. So, yet again, I completed the form that asks for all kinds of irrelevant information. For example the “name of description of product” is a required field, but is obviously not relevant when reporting a counterfeit website. Not only that, but the comments section only allows for 150 characters! OakleyContinue reading »

Bombarded by Facebook Scam Ads

Bombarded by Facebook Scam AdsHere are a couple of more scam ads that I discovered today: The first advertisement for sunglasselover.com is actually redirected to oakleyjpstore.com. It seems like sunglasselover.com is not even a registered domain, while oakleyjpstore.com is registered under Lin Lin in China on January 23, 2013. oakleyjpshop.com was registered by the same individual on January 14, 2013. It’s amazing that Facebook allows these kinds of advertisements. With some of the best brains in the industry, it should be easy for them to automatically check the domain registration dates of all websites that want to advertise on Facebook. Domains registered during theContinue reading »

Facebook Profits From Counterfeiters and Con Artists

Facebook Profits From Counterfeiters and Con ArtistsI’ve decided to create this blog to feature some stories in the world of marketing related to Your Next Ensemble. Hopefully it will be of interest to some people out there. Today I want to comment on how Facebook seems to make money from dubious websites selling counterfeit products or otherwise scamming their customers. Since I live in Japan, I am normally targeted by ads in Japanese, of which you’ll find some examples below: This screen capture was taken from my Facebook Adboard, which is a useful site on Facebook showing your most recently viewed ads. The left advertisement isContinue reading »