AP Charges $12.50 To Quote 5 Words

If there's one word, or thought that has really changed in the past decade it's 'journalism'. Ten years ago you thought of a journalist as someone who was on the TV reading you the news, or a reporter writing in a newspaper. Nowadays, anyone can be a journalist. Hell, you can almost call what I do journalism.

You can bet that this change of cultural definition concerning journalism has many of the traditional outlets upset. Don't believe me? Check out this story, reporting that the AP is going to start charging for having their content quoted. For example, if I wanted to quote something from the AP here and it was 20 words long, then I would owe them $12.50.

I almost couldn't believe this story when I read it. I could understand them charging if the person quoting them wasn't linking back. I guess it really comes down to how much they value their incoming links. I really don't want to relish on this too much, as it has been known for awhile that the AP really has no clue how to handle the online arena.

The story that really has me interested is from the New York Times, and it concerns YouTube. Earlier in the year, YouTube launched a service called 'News Near You'. It's a platform that generates videos concerning news in your nearby area. It's still relatively new, so not many affiliates have signed up yet. Where I live, only one news affiliate has posted videos on the channel.

This scenario is interesting, because station owners have a decision on their hands. Do they try and build traffic to their own site where they receive greater revenue? Or dance with the YouTube devil and get their company name out there and take a hit for ad revenue? Talk about some tricky market analysis; have fun with that one you experts.. ;)

How To Identify If Your Website Has Been Penalized

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), there are 2 definitions for the sanctions that can be placed on your site by a search engine. The first is a penalty, and the second is a filter. Each one has different causes and remedies, but if you've dropped out of the first few pages of results then there are SEO issues that need to be addressed.

What is a penalty?

Generally speaking, a penalty is one of the worst sanctions you can get from a search engine. It can involve losing all of your page rank and essentially having your site "de-listed" from the search results. Penalties are caused by violations of search engine guidelines including cloaking, keyword stuffing, spamming, and using prohibited or "black hat" optimization methods. A penalty is more difficult to fix than simple filtering.

What is a filter?

A filter is considered any factor applied by the search engine that moves your actual ranking below the position it should occupy. For instance, if you normally had a #1 ranking but a search engine wanted to penalize you for over optimization, you could end up in the #30, #95, or #950 position on the search engine. Normally when the filtering factor is changed or removed, your search engine ranking will go back to its proper position within a few weeks.When a site or page is filtered, you are still getting indexed and cached by the search engine.

What Causes Filters to Get Applied by Search Engines?

• Duplicate Content - Pages on your site, another site owned by you, or a competitor's site have substantially similar or identical content. Even if your site had the original content, a search engine may consider it to be duplicated if it was found on another website first.
• Over Optimization - Obvious optimization tactics can trip up a search engine filter, sometimes even unintentionally. If you have too many keywords, too many links pointing to a page with the same anchor text, too many instances where site content elements (Title tag, Header text, and regular text) match up with anchor text, or keyword stuffed internal site linking, then you can be tripping up an over optimization filter.
• New Site - Also known as a "sandbox" filter, new sites are generally filtered by search engines. This filter has been put in place to keep people from spamming search engines with multiple new URLs containing questionable content. Essentially, your site will need to earn the trust of the search engine, and time is a factor in trust. In some cases a new site can avoid this type of filtering, but usually the factors involved are beyond even advanced optimization.

What kinds of filters can get applied to my site?

There are 3 Major Filter Types:

• Keyword filters - If you find yourself filtered for only a few key phrases, and especially the ones for which you are using heavy anchor text linking practices, then a keyword filter may be to blame.
• Site wide filters - If your whole site has been impacted, than there is a factor that is causing your whole site to lose rankings. If your site is new, it is likely filtered.
• Link filtering - Links to your site may have lost popularity. Search engines continually reevaluate all sites on the internet, and link popularity involves hundreds of factors. If a powerful site linking to yours lost its trust for any reason, the link to your site would lose its value and you would see a rankings drop. Therefore, it is always best to diversify your inbound link popularity.

The benefits of Firefox and Internet Explorer

I find it humorous that something as simple as a web browser has such a profound impact on people. Some people live and die by a certain one. I've gotten into heated discussions with people regarding the benefits of Firefox and Internet Explorer. Depending on who I'm arguing against, I'll take one side over the other. Just because I'm a huge fan of debating.

I've heard all the compelling points for browser support. IE displays content in a way that is more pleasing to the eye. Firefox has security measures that you won't find on any other browser. Those are just a couple of arguments I've heard before.

The truth I find is that the more I use various browsers, the more I find that they're the same. Of course there are some subtle differences. If you're a very particular person then Firefox has a slew of add-ons to take advantage of. However, that doesn't make it the great escape from IE that everyone makes it out to be. At the end of the day, both products bring us the glorious internet.

The debate of web browsers in my eyes paints a perfect picture of the idiocies of human behavior. We become so engrained in thinking a certain way, or staying with a certain product that we can't be told anything different. I believe I've mentioned it before in my writing, but think about the debate between Coke and Pepsi. Which one is better you ask, well that depends on who you talk to.

Along with Firefox, and Internet Explorer there are a slew of other browsers out there. All of which do primarily the same thing -- act as a portal for the world wide web. So, what little things keep you from using one web browser over the other? Are you a designer and hate all the browsers, with the intricacies you have to mind when designing a site? Come on, I know you're out there.