Nothing can be more confusing to a website owner as the robots.txt file. Born out of technology in the programming world, the robot.txt file is nothing more than a server command
for search engines. Unfortunately, while search engines understand the file, humans have a difficult time understanding machine language.
The Google blog is now running a two-part series on understanding robots.txt and the robots
meta tag. Both of these articles, while providing a lot of great in-depth information, is much more than any site owner or manager wants to know. Especially when you start talking technology, bots, spiders, permissions, etc.. Most owners don’t know where to start, nor do they understand the technology behind either of these issues. What people really want to know is “what do I need to do?”
In fact, most website marketers don’t care. They just want it done.
Just tell me what to do
Most people just want to know what to do, where to put it and be done with it. So if that’s you - just go to the bottom of the article and you get what you need. Otherwise, for those that are curious, but don’t like technical explanations; I’m going to explain it the best that I can, but in terms the common man, like me, can understand.
Robots.txt Explained. Sort of . . .
The best way to explain the robots.txt file, is that it is a ‘welcome mat’ for the search engines. It’s not so much that the file is necessary for search engine success, but it’s one of those hundreds of small things that you need to consider, much like everything in SEO. If you have it, it will help your search engine success in a very small way. If you don’t have it, it won’t harm you, it’s simply a technical issue.
The technical issue is that the search engines request this file before or during every spidering session. Some request it before every session, some request prior to groups of pages. Either way, search engines request this file multiple times in a session and in a day. If the file does not exist, then it shows up as a ‘page not found error’ in your log files. This is is getting borderline technical so I’ll stop here with this explanation. So, if the search engines request it, it must be important. That’s why i believe that it is important to have.
Welcome Home I like to explain it as a ‘welcome mat’ because some people have a welcome mat at the entrance of their house and some people don’t. Either way, it doesn’t prevent people from coming into the house. The same for the robots.txt file, it simply tells search engines that they are welcome to visit the site.
Don’t Go There!
If you want to get fancy with your welcome mat, you can tell the search engine where not to go in your house. Typically, these are files that are not important to the search engines or files that you don’t want showing up in the search results. It’s kind of like that closet where you store all your junk. When people come over you don’t want them to go into the closet. It’s not vital for them to know its in there, as it’s stuff you typically store out of sight. For a website, some people “disallow” printer friendly pages, images, or directories that they do not want to show up in the search results.
Its Not for Security
Now, I am not saying to used this as a way of protecting information that you don’t want people to see. If that is the case, then you need to put that behind a password. The robots.txt file is not to hide information from people. It simply to tell the search engines not to index it.
Knowing this is really what’s important from a marketing standpoint, the technical standpoint is a little more difficult, because it gets into server commands, which most people frankly don’t understand. Frankly, I’m surprised how many times I run unto problems with the robots.txt as the culprit. This little file has been the cause of a lot of problems for some very large websites.
The Robots.txt Structure
There are only two lines required for a standard robots.txt file. The first line identifies the robots you want to specifically command.
User-agent: *
The asterisk is a wildcard, meaning: all robots - follow these instructions.
The second line does allow tells the robots where not to go, which is defined either at the directory level or the page level.
Disallow:
If you don’t want to disallow anything then don’t put anything there. That’s the typical set-up to allow the search engines free reign of your website.
It’s as simple as that. And here is what it looks like, written in a notepad file.
Adding and Removing
Now, some people get a little fancy and like to disallow certain directories. This is usually done to remove any duplicate content. So, let’s say I have a directory of all of my printer-friendly pages, which are really only duplicates of the HTML pages.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /printerfriendly/
I’ve disallowed the entire directory by specifically naming it to the search engines.
The forward slash is an important part of this file. That is where most people make their mistakes, is with that slash.
Blocking your Website
By adding a slash to the disallow command, like this:
Disallow:/
You are telling the search engines to “go away” with this command.
More info
If you want more inormation about the robots.txt file and all the things you can do with it, I suggest the following resources:
Summary
Hopefully, this has helped a few understand the place and purpose of the robots.txt file. Even more than that, I hope that it has taken the fear away from dealing with this file. Many site managers are very gun-shy, as they may have had a disallowed site from the search engines with a misplaced slash at one time or another.
If you have any questions about this file, feel free to leave them in the comments. I and many others are very willing to help you understand what you need to know about the robots.txt file.
It’s better to ask questions and be sure that you are making the right move than to guess and disallow your entire website . . .
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
While people seem to enjoy the Google cartoons on holidays and other anniversaries, it looks like the Valentines Day logo hurried through with a little error.
See something a little odd? No, not the chocolate.
Spell out the word Google - yes, the “l” is missing.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
In my seminars, I enjoy teaching analytics because the fun is in finding effective and memorable methods to help people understand the concepts. One of my favorites is an analysis of the Red-Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.
What? You don’t know about the Red Shirt Phenomenon? Well, as any die-hard trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk – you’re gonna die. That’s the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test. After all, I hadn’t seen any definitive proof; it’s just what people said. (Remind you of your current web analytics strategy?) So, let’s set our phasers on ’stun’ and see what we find . . .
The basic stats:
The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (startrek.com) in its five-year mission. (Now, I know that the show was only on the air for 3 years, but bear with me. 80 episodes were produced, which gives us the data to build from.) 59 crewmembers were killed during the mission, which comes out to 13.7% of the crew. So, that will be our overall conversion rate, 13.7%.
Data Segmentation:
However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need:
Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4
Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)
So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.
However, that’s only just simple stats reporting – ready for some analysis?
In-depth Analysis:
Analysis involves asking questions about the data. Analysis attempts to bring reason and cause to the reported data in order to find why something is happening. With that data, one can improve the situation based on the intelligence gained from the analysis.
Q: What causes a red-shirted crewman to die?
On-board incident – 42.5%
Beaming down to the planet – 57.5%
There were also many fights during the mission; on the Enterprise, on planets, and various space stations. The fights were also divided between alien races or crazed crewmen (usually wearing red shirts).
There were 130 fights over 80 episodes.
18 of the 130 fights resulted in a fatality.
13 of the 18 fatal fights resulted in a red-shirt fatality.
It was found that red-shirted crewmembers tended to die in groups. In 17 red-shirt fatality episodes, 8 were multiple incidents, 9 were single incidents. In a little less than 50% of the fatal red-shirt situations, multiple crewmen were vaporized.
Q: What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen?
Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet’s surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders.
Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and “makes contact” the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks’ 24 “relationships” there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.
The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).
Here are the statistics:
Red Shirt Death episodes = 18
Episodes with fights = 55
Probability of a fight breaking out = 70%
Kirk “conquest” episodes = 24
Kirk “conquest” + fights = 16
Kirk “conquest” + red shirt casualty= 4
Red shirt death + fight + Kirk “conquest” = 3
And the data trends;
Probability of a red-shirt casualty= 53%
14% of fights ended in a fatality (with a 72% chance the fatality wore a red shirt)
Probability of a red-shirt “incident” when Kirk has a “conquest” = 12%
The red-shirt survival rate is slightly higher when Kirk meets women than when a fight breaks out. This trend necessitates the question: How often did Captain Kirk “meet” women? In 30% of the missions.
As the data shows, Captain Kirk “making contact” with alien women has an impact on the crew’s survival. The red-shirt death rate is higher when a fight breaks out than when Kirk meets a woman and a fight breaks out. Yet the analysis shows that meeting Kirk meeting women only happens in 30% of the missions.
Conclusion:
We can reliably improve the survivability of the red-shirted crewmen by only exploring peaceful, female-only planets (android and alien females included).
Reporting the Data:
Now, researching the data can be fun and informative. However, that is only half of the battle. The interesting part comes when you have to communicate not only the data, but your conclusions in an effective, persuasive manner. The best analysis won’t go far if you can’t communicate the conclusions in a manner that people understand.
There are a few options at our disposal. First, the PowerPoint Method.
There are a number of things wrong with the typical method of presenting data. For starters, this presentation could bore even the most hardened Starfleet manager (CEO). The typical corporate PowerPoint slide design is obnoxious and does not leave room for information, the charts are redundant, even unnecessary, and it does not do a good job of communicating the information or the analysis.
In most cases, PowerPoint is NOT the recommended tool for communicating analytics data. It is not the right tool for the job. Communicating analytics data involves providing conclusions based on facts, tests, comparisons, and research. In order to display the necessary data, a better method must be used, and not one that forces redundant bullet point and “snazzy” charts.
Visualizing the Data:
There are some necessary elements required in developing a chart for this type data:
A list of the specific episodes
Events that happened in each episode
The number of events that happened in each episode
An easy way to identify data, then compare and contrast actions in all episodes
By seeing all of the available data in one chart, associations, patterns and conclusions can be drawn simply by comparing the relationships as they are presented. This is something that I learned from Edward Tufte – 1. More information is needed to simplify data presentation. 2. Unless all of the data is presented, there is no data integrity.
Information is Primary to Design
This is critical in developing a chart of information – the information is primary. List the necessary data elements first. Then, develop the design around the information, and not the other way around. Otherwise, a beautiful chart will lack the critical information necessary to support your conclusions. The graphing software that I found extremely effective for communicating the episode data for this Star Trek analysis is Microsoft’s Office 2007, and in Apple’s OS X graphics software.
click for full-size version
I like this chart – eliminating the need for a legend is critical to allowing the information to flow. The data is the same color or object as the information we are trying to convey. Because there is no suitable color for Captain Kirk’s affairs, we substituted a very flattering picture. Fights are represented by tiny phasers, which are not the best representation because of the size, but can easily be determined by the process of elimination. This chart allows conclusions and observations that simple charts, numbers, and explanations may never bring to the surface. It allows for easy comparison, both to other shirt colors, and in relation to other episodes. It also looks as though Kirk was a very busy man.
In the first year of the series, red-shirt casualties were lower than other color-shirted crewmembers. The second and especially the third seasons were especially brutal. In the third season, only red-shirted crewmembers died; maybe because the other colors enacted better safety protocols, or maybe because they avoided the bridge when a new planet came into view, for fear of beaming down with Cpt. Kirk.
Summary:
Of the elements that helped to provide this analysis, segmentation was key. Segmentation of groups allows for comparisons. Comparisons allow you to spot trends that by be different from the rest. Asking questions of the data allows you to dig into specific trends and spot additional factors that have affects the original analysis. Unless we dug into Kirk’s personal life, we may never have spotted the contrast of Kirk’s attraction to alien females as it related to saving red-shirt crewmen’s lives.
Remember, when you have to account for lost crewmembers, your report needs to account for the how, the why, and the ability to draw specific conclusions as to how to affect the trends in the future. Depending upon your approach, you could either doom the project, and future red-shirted crewmen, or you could be visiting planets full of peaceful alien women.
Addendum:
I found this motivational poster, that could well be hanging in a cubicle at Starfleet headquarters . . . (courtesy of StarTrek Motivational Posters).
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
Ben cites some amazing statistics of the phenomenon that is American Idol. I’ll admit it, I won’t consider myself a fan, but I watch the show. I already have a few favorites, one is a young man named Sundance Head. If you didn’t hear his audition, check it out. You will probably hear of him very soon. Wait, I guess that does make me a fan . . . drat!
As I am writing this, YouTube is removing the American Idol audition clips for copyright violations. Great job AI, nice way to beat down a loyal audience. You have the ultimate buzz builder happening right in front of you and you kill it with lawyers, good call.
Anyway, the American Idol statistics are very interesting. The best album sales were in the first two seasons, and even though the viewership, ratings, ad costs, revenue, and total votes have increased, the sales have not kept the same pace; in fact the sales have declined in many years. They certainly don’t match the growth of the attention.
According to Ben,
As the audience for Idol has grown, as has the number of votes cast for its contestants, album sales of winning performers have not kept pace. First-season winner Kelly Clarkson is still the show’s reigning sales champ. If we divide the number of albums she’s sold against total number of Idol viewers for season one and call it a conversion ratio, Clarkson scored an impressive 65%.
The disparity between Idol’s viewership and albums sold is most pronounced in year three. That year, Idol’s viewership increased 16% from the previous year, and the number of votes cast increased 22%. Yet season three winner Fantasia Barrino sold 69% fewer albums than previous winner Ruben Studdard. Barrino’s conversion ratio was a paltry 9%.
Compare year one to year five and the numbers are even more dramatic: 12.7 million viewers in year one vs. 30.6 million in year five. That’s a 141% increase. But look at album sales: year five winner Taylor Hicks was no match for the petite yet powerfully voiced Clarkson: His album sales were four times less than Clarkson’s. Hicks’ conversion ratio? He’s in the basement at 7%.
That’s not to say Soul Man Hicks and the other Idol winners haven’t done well. Selling one million of anything is remarkable, much less two or five million. Idol remains a potent hitmaker for aspiring amateurs. No other program comes close to popularizing a pro-am approach.
When I first saw this chart I was amazed. This is much more a phenomenon and a cash cow for the producers - for the singers, not so much. When you consider the outgrageous growth of viewership and audience involvement, but yet the lack of album sales, it seems contradictory. The price increases for the 30 sec commercial far outpace the viewership, which is interesting.
There could be many contributing factors, one of which is that the contest itself is the attraction rather than the singers themselves. I enjoyed both Bo Bice and Taylor Hicks, but I haven’t bought the albums. Now that I think about it, I didn’t buy the Bo Bice CD because it didn’t sound anything like who he was on the show. I was looking for some throwback southern rock, not pop-produced psuedo-rock sound. A producer’s heavy-handed influence was very obvious, so it didn’t appeal. Maybe that is the key - the show is more exciting because the singers have a choice in what they sing, but seemingly no choice when they get the record contract.
However, in terms of success for the show - it’s outrageous. Ad revenues have skyrocketed and the buzz is mainstream. The singers after the show? Well, that’s just not the same . . .
Is the conversion less exciting than the journey? In this case, I tend to think so.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
I get questions all of the time about Google analytics. Many companies have opted for this service as, well, it’s free. You can’t beat the price.
I’ve always had hesitations about free analytics, and my main hesitation is someone else owning MY data. This is why I prefer weblog-based analytics. Sure, I supplement those with some JavaScript tagging, but ultimately, I rely on log files for many reasons. The first of which is that I own the data.
The next question is what happens if the free service stops being free – or even more, if it is simply not offered anymore? You are now without luck. It is any company’s prerogative to stop doing something that’s free. It goes against the business grain. (Remember Yahoo’s directory? Or, even Looksmart’s fiasco?)
When people skimp on their analytics, it shows me that they have very little understanding on the value of what analytics can bring. For a program that can potentially save and make you 10 times (or more) it’s cost within the first year, i think the price tag should not be an obstacle. Nor should the price tag of a good analylist, who will make sense of the data.
Ask.com’s blog takes a very humorous look at depending on free Google services. I also recommend adding the Ask Blog to your subscriptions. They have excellent resources, and highlight many of the new technologies and features.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
Are they doing enough to protect “the other white meat” phrase? I don’t think so. First things first - an apology was issued.
I had some thoughts from observing the blogstorm that resulted from the National Pork Board, represented by Faegre and Benson, sending a threatening Cease and Desist letter to Jennifer Laycock of The Lactivist and Search Engine Guide. Jennifer and I have had a number of discussions about the nature of blogging and corporate responsibility.
The National Pork Board contacted Jennifer and gave her a very sincere apology, and they are talking to her about rectifying the situation. Knowing Jennifer, she’s not out for herself. She’s mainly upset at the derogatory remarks made about breastfeeding made by Faegre and Benson lawyer, Jennifer Daniel Collins. Interestingly, there has been no word from Faegre and Benson, about this issue. It makes me wonder if this C&D letter was written with knowledge from the Pork Board, or if this was the result of the firms’ actions. Regardless, someone made the call, and the incorrect judgments, inflammatory statements and fuzzy legal interpretations came with Ms. Collins name attached.
The Power Shift
Here’s my take on this Blogstorm and from observing many others. Corporate attorneys are not popular. (Say it isn’t so!) But really, in the past, corporate attorneys, especially Intellectual Property lawyers were able to send out threatening C&D letters to anyone and intimidate them into complicity. What we have been witnessing lately is a complete reversal of that power, and I can name many situations in the past year to support this assessment.
The power is now in the hands of the citizen marketer, especially one with a personal blog. Anyone who has a dispute with a corporation or a corporate attorney can now bring their case to the court of public opinion and have it heard by thousands of their peers. As any attorney knows, the court of public opinion is critical, and almost more important than anything that happens in a courtroom. The citizens are able to bring their case online and have it analyzed by other practicing attorneys, apply to the Digital Rights Foundation, or bring attention to their matter with a few posts, emails, and contacts with the right people.
This means that we are closing the era of unleashed corporate attorneys who intimidate small businesses and individuals with confusing legalese and strong-arm tactics. The blogosphere crackles to life when these situations happen because it feeds the frenzy. The crowd mentality develops its own sense of justice.
The culture is changing, and bloggers are building a louder voice and capturing more of the public opinion. Their word spreads faster and with more momentum. A press release is like a cymbal in the storm when bloggers are in full swing. I am interested to see where this goes in the future, and how many more cases will be tried in the blogosphere. Bloggers don’t speak legalese; we have conversations with each other. When another person, usually a corporation or an advertiser, enters the conversation with a sense of entitlement to be heard, it will be rejected. One-way messages don’t work here.
Now, a personal judgment.
I did a simple search on Google for the “trademarked” phrase, “The other white meat.” What I found in the first four pages of results had me scratching my head. I found amazingly blatant examples of trademark infringement on the EXACT phrase. Why go after a breastfeeding mom with a “small” blog, who isn’t even using the same words, when there are blatant examples so easily found?
Here are some of the Google results for “The other white meat”
PrankPlace.com, selling T-Shirts with the slogan “Cat: The Other White Meat”
YouTube, Mars Volta concert footage of the song “Abortion: the other white meat”
You have to be kidding me
Is this enough to make you sick to your stomach about the choice of target for Faegre and Benson lawyers? They go after a mother who is raising money for the cause of helping premature babies, and ignoring the blatant, tasteless and even offensive trademark infringement that is within well within their ability to find. Yet breastfeeding has tarnished their client’s good image? How about the association with abortion, the adult film industry, and whale hunting?
One blogger noticed 56 copyright violations on Cafe Press of THE ACTUAL PHRASE! Now, why target one CafePress user, who has a shirt that is a play on the phrase rather than the actual phrase itself? And why did CafePress quickly remove Jennifer’s shirt and not any of these other, more obvious infringements? What kind of legal tactic is this, where they ignore the elephant in the room?
My deduction is that Jennifer looked like an easy target. However, if they would have taken the time to read her blog they would have quickly realized that Jennifer was fresh off organizing a protest against Delta Airlines for their “boob” job.
Looking to the future
I hope this is a shot across the bow, as blogs are changing the way and the speed that people communicate. It doesn’t take long to communicate to like-minded people, and most of them will do what they can to do bring light to a situation they feel is unjust.
However, it doesn’t have to be all bad. Good news travels too, not as fast, but many bloggers are just as willing to compliment business for their professionalism and god works as well.
Thanks to the Pork Board, for apologizing and doing what is right, though I suspect they were a third part in all of this, they are still doing the right thing with the apology and working things out with Jennifer.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
As many of my friends know, I also run the Website Accessibility Blog. It started as a hobby and a passion, and is
now a full-fledged voice in the accessibility community. I rarely cross-post article between the two blogs, but this was one that I felt merited the additional attention to a differnt audience.
Many times, in my speaking on various subjects, I do not get the opportunity to delve into accessibility and the importance of it. Recently, I was able to observe some user accessibility testing of a large application, and was fascinated with the people and their stories. What follows is a steam of thoughts and observations that I had while observing these tests. Actual user testing is strange – dealing with humans brings out all of the random factors.
First Issue: User Interaction with JAWS
One of the testers was a diabetic. She was blind and used JAWS, a screen reader, to navigate sites by listening to the links, content, and options. From the diabetes, she also suffered from carpel-tunnel-like symptoms, called trigger finger. The tendons in her fingers were shortening and becoming increasingly inflexible, which happens to many diabetics. Her hands were scarred from multiple surgeries on those tendons. The issue I observed was that some of the keystrokes combinations were very difficult for her to perform. Certain hand movements were difficult, slightly painful, but it was a surprise to find an unintended consequence to key combinations.
This is more of a JAWS issue as the program is made for blind users to use key combiunations to navuigate websites and applications, but sometimes does not take into account any physical disabilities that may also be in play. She relied on simple keystroke commands, but the navigation sometimes required her to use some complex key combinations, which were difficult.
Second issue: Usability v Accessibility
The developers of this software application tested many methods of improving accessibility. Each option was tested and evaluated. However, in the actual user testing the JAWS users expected certain behaviors, such as error handling, which were typical of using the web in combination with Internet Explorer and JAWS. When those specific events were improved in the application, the users were not pleased with the different behavior. Even though the application was more accessible, the users did not expect the more accessible behavior. They were used to overcoming the obstacles of poor accessibility and expected that behavior. Because they expected something different, they were not prepared for the more accessible method, and some actually preferred the less-accessible behaviors.
his is one case where expectancy, a key component of usability, affected the judgment of users in using a new system. The developers now had a dilemma of keeping the more accessible code, which improved many functions, or to change the code back to the typical less-accessible counterpart, simply because users were used to the issues that they typically cope with.
Third Issue: Vendor Claims
Here is where I can rant for days. Software applications that claim to be “accessible” but really aren’t. And usually, there isn’t even a good case that could be made for the “accessible” claim. Because a screen reader can toss out a few works? How can you describe your product as accessible when you don’t even use proper markup of page elements, frames, and critical navigation items?
As an example, this software produces reports that are navigated across multiple frames. The frameset lacks any “noframe” descriptions, so the user only has the title of each frame, which is barely descriptive. The main navigation is a tree structure that has no labels or descriptions, and the only method to expand the tree navigation is mouse-dependant. The navigation labels in the actual report lacked any sort of descriptive text. “Void” was the label for the print function. Many other labels were non-existed, misleading or simply absent.
This is accessible? How can you possible claim to be an accessible product when your application does not even take the simplest steps for accessible mark-up?
This last issue was the one that made me the angriest. The vendor of this application is seemingly unimpressed with the customer’s repeated requests for an actual accessible product. They simply seem to shrug their shoulders and claim that it is “accessible” when it is clearly unacceptable. It makes me wonder how this claim can be made and if there are any laws being broken. I am also sure that many vendors make the claim of being accessible without even understanding what accessible means, much less having the user testing to back it up.
What I learned
Even the best programming cannot account for human accessibility and usability testing. Testing is critical to developing any site or application, as there will be many factors that were simply not considered in the development. My favorite part of the testing was the interaction and conversations with each of the testers. I enjoyed getting to know them, their stories, and their opinions about website accessibility. I feel as though I learned more from these amazing people than any book could have contained.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
In a situation that is very close to me, as a friend of mine, Jennifer Laycock, runs a pro-breastfeeding blog. As part of raising awareness of breastfeeding and promoting milk banks for premature babies, she sells shirts the proceeds are donated to these causes.
Well, one of her pro-breastfeeding shirts reads, “The Other White Milk.”
She received a Cease and Desist letter from the National Pork Board claiming copyright infringement on their slogan (Milk!?!) and threatened to sue her if she did not remove the offending shirt.
On the “have to see to believe” part, they claimed that she advocates breastfeeding after infancy, like she was promoting some sort of breastfeeding fetish site or something, which shows that the National Pork Board’s lawyers neglected to even see who is was they were ready to sue, or even what they stood for.
Check out Jennifer’s blog for updates and email addresses for the National pork Board, their lawyers and PR department, which I suspect loves the attention they are receiving from this situation. My friends, you are well on your way to being the pork-butt of many jokes.
The beauty, you see, is that Jennifer is a well-respected member of the search engine optimization community, she is the editor of Search Engine Guide and we work together developing viral marketing and word-of-mouth campaigns online.
This should be fun to watch . . .
Update:
12 hours after Jennifer’s original post, we have lost count of the blogs that have picked up her story. It has run through the SEO and online marketing industy, the Breastfeeding groups, and is now making it to law blogs. A Google News search for “pork” shows articles about this ranking #1, #4, and #7.
Awesome.
Update: Feb 02, 6:05 PM
There have been well over 250 blogs that we have been able to track linking to the original article. The audience has covered militant breasteeding moms, nudists, law students, tech blogs, and myspace blogs.
A blog search on Technorati for the term “The Lactvist” shows over 70 results in the last 24 hours.
Jennifer released a statement to KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa (the home base of the National Pork Board). The broadcast will be available after 5 PM CST.
The National Pork Board, and more importantly, the law firm of Faegre & Benson have been completely mum on the subject, despite the overwhelming tide of negative publicity that is covering the ‘net. Obviously, they haven’t read many books on blogging and dealing with bloggers (hint - get a copy of The ClueTrain Manifesto - NOW).
The first rule is to deal with it honestly and personally - not to “ride it out.” Just ask Trent Lott, Dan Rather & CBS, and The NYT & Jayson Blair what bloggers can do if left without comment.
Update: Feb 3, 2007 30 hours after the original post was made, some articles and blog entires have made it into the top 20 Google results for “National Pork Board”. In less than 2 full days, the story has made it to Information Week.
Interestingly, why should the National Pork Board pay for the mistakes of the anti-breastfeeding, crack legal staff at Faegre and Benson? Wasn’t it the lawyer there that started this? I wonder if these things have to be approved at any level, especially with the choice language, contradictory terms, and fuzzy legal standing?
Update: 3:17 PM, February 3, 3007
72 Hours after the initial post, The National Pork Board is in contact with Jennifer. They have issued a very sincere apology and are working towards a resolution. Fantastic. Their first move seems to be a very positive one, and they are taking steps to rectify the situation. No word from the legal team at Faegre and Benson, though . . . .
Update Feb 7, 2007:
In a very nice gesture on the part of the National Pork Board, they are taking up a VOLUNTARY collection to donate to the Columbus, Ohio milkbank that Jennifer supports. It’s a long, legal story about why they can’t officially do it as an organization, but in my opinion, this smacks of real honesty and true heartfelt feelings towards making an unpleasant situtation better.
All the more, I still don’t think they were aware of this until the backfire started. I think they are at the mercy of this lone lawyers’ actions in the matter, and they are doing the right thing to make up for that.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
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Nothing can be more confusing to a website owner as the robots.txt file. Born out of technology in the programming world, the robot.txt file is nothing more than a server command
I like to explain it as a ‘welcome mat’ because some people have a welcome mat at the entrance of their house and some people don’t. Either way, it doesn’t prevent people from coming into the house. The same for the robots.txt file, it simply tells search engines that they are welcome to visit the site.
Typically, these are files that are not important to the search engines or files that you don’t want showing up in the search results. It’s kind of like that closet where you store all your junk. When people come over you don’t want them to go into the closet. It’s not vital for them to know its in there, as it’s stuff you typically store out of sight. For a website, some people “disallow” printer friendly pages, images, or directories that they do not want to show up in the search results. 
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
