A company called Web Host Agents continues to send businesses an invoice for web hosting services. The problem is that the invoice is fake, and Web Host Agents doesn’t currently host the company’s website. It’s a fake invoice, a sales tactic that’s being disguised. One of my clients received such an invoice recently in the mail. They asked me if it’s a scam or not–to which I promptly replied, telling them that it is. Let’s take a look at the invoice, which does look convincing.

I first reported this back in April 2019, and more than a year later they are still sending these fake invoices. [Read more…]

In this episode of the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast, I spoke with Mark Traphagen from SEO Clarity. We discussed Schema Markup for Websites, as well as Schema Markup and On Page SEO tools. Tools mentioned include SEO Clarity’s Schema.Dev Chrome Plugin, SEO Clarity Essentials, and SEO Clarity’s Spark Chrome Plugin. [Read more…]

In the last Quarter of 2019, I’ve launched the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer Podcast. It can be found on most of the popular podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and, of course, right here. Initially I’ve been uploading these podcasts to our YouTube Channel, so you can see the videos there. I’ll continue to upload future digital marketing podcasts there. [Read more…]

Adobe will remove the Adobe Flash Player from its website after December 2020. This means that we are essentially seeing the EOL End of Life of the Flash Player. If your website was originally build in Flash and it requires the Flash Player in order to view it, then it’s time to think about redesigning your website. [Read more…]

As you might be aware, Avast shut down Jumpshot, and its shutdown affected several keyword research tools that relied on that data. I uncovered some interesting information regarding keyword search volume data while looking at data from some of the popular keyword tools. [Read more…]

The website Schema.org is down, currently showing a “500 Server Error”. A 500 Server Error could be the result of several different things, such as too much traffic for the server to handle, a Denial of Service Attack, or a misconfiguration on the web server or website itself. So, at this point it’s just speculation as to why Schema.org is down. [Read more…]

You might recall that a while back I wrote about Jumpshot being shut down back in January. Jumpshot provided a lot of click data to various tool providers that used that data in different ways. One of the ways the click data was used is in keyword research tools. SEOs have used keyword research tools for years, and we’ve relied on that keyword data. And, if Jumpshot data was relied on heavily by any keyword research tools, then their data would be affected. [Read more…]

By Bill Hartzer, April 7, 2020 at 6:29pm CST.

Starting sometime this month (April 2020) Microsoft will begin blocking any email that does not have SPF and DKIM alignment for email sent to Outlook 365 domains. What that means is that if you send an email from your domain name and you have not properly set up the proper email records on your domain name, people using Microsoft Outlook 365 won’t receive your email. To make sure that they do receive your email, you need to make sure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are properly set up on your domain name. [Read more…]

For at least the past 15 years, just about every single year that I have been posting on this blog, I make an April Fool’s post. Usually it’s on and around the 1st of April, and in the past it’s actually been, well, a few days before. However, this year, 2020, is very different. So, officially, I have cancelled April Fool’s 2020, at least my April Fool’s joke. I can’t tell you what it was going to be, as I actually don’t know. I’ve been too busy and pre-occupied with other details that I haven’t even thought about it. But, going along with tradition, I feel as if I need to make an April 1st post. [Read more…]

by Bill Hartzer, February 18, 2020 at 2:38pm CST

Hitwise, the internet data company that has helped global brands and agencies understand how consumers think, search, book, and buy online, is shutting down. In a statement published on their website, Hitwise posted that due to events outside of their control, Hitwise is winding down its operations. [Read more…]

Avast, a digital security products company, has announced that they are shutting down Jumpshot, a company that has provided “digital intelligence from within the Internet’s most valuable walled gardens”. There apparently were some questions about how and to whom the data that Jumpshot shared and sold. Some of the companies that utilized Jumpshot data were SEO tool providers, who then sold the data to SEOs, who used it for keyword research purposes, for example. [Read more…]

Certainly no one expected this.

A Sunday morning helicopter crash with NBA star Kobe Bryant aboard. TMZ, the entertainment news service that first broke the news of Kobe Bryant’s death, did not expect this either. The website is getting so much internet traffic that the TMZ website appears to be down, as well. [Read more…]

Looking for a new web host for your website? Or you’re going to move your website to another web host? Well, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has a list of four questions to ask when hiring a web host provider. The effort here is applauded. But, unfortunately, the FTC didn’t exactly get all the terminology right, which would lead to even more questions. Or a small business looking dumb in front of their web host provider. Here’s the graphic they put out, and here’s their tweet. [Read more…]

Update: ClixSense has been sold to a company called Prodege, and re-launched as Ysense.com on August 1, 2019.

ClixSense, an online rewards website, and i-Dressup.com, a dress-up games websites, have agreed to settle with the United States Federal Trade Commission that they failed to take reasonable steps to secure consumers’ data. They both allowed hackers to hack into their websites and get customer data. The two websites are not connected with each other. [Read more…]

The payments from the class action lawsuit Opperman v. Kong Technologies are being sent out. If you were a member of the class, and you opted to receive your payment in the form of an Amazon gift card, then you may have received or will receive the Amazon gift card today. I personally received mine–in the amount of $59.31. I believe I was one of the first ones to fill out the proper paperwork, as I was a member of the class identified in the lawsuit. [Read more…]

As I’m sure you’re aware by now, on May 25, 2018, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) went into effect. There are still a lot of questions that US-based businesses have, including whether or not they have to comply with GDPR or not. I did write a post titled What is GDPR, which you’ll probably want to read. [Read more…]

Google has launched a new feature in Google Search Console that allows web site owners to request a Recrawl of their own web site. I suspect that this is in response to web site owners, such as myself, complaining over the past few weeks about Google’s slowdown in indexing. Google announced this feature on Twitter. [Read more…]

Whenever there’s a great search engine marketing or search marketing industry conference, I personally take the time to review all of the speakers. Just recently, I hand picked the speakers to see at Pubcon Austin. Especially when it’s a great conference, such as SEMPDX’s Engage conference, which is being held on Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. I spoke at last year’s Engage conference, and the year before that–and it’s a great one-day conference to attend. [Read more…]

A bug in Grammarly’s Google Chrome web browser extension was exposing all of your documents to virtually anyone or any website that wants to view them. If you’ve used Grammarly’s Chrome extension, all of the documents (including websites, documents, MS Word documents, including Microsoft Office documents) have been exposed to the public.

If any of the documents that you’ve used Grammarly on to check spelling or plagiarism are of a sensitive nature, then you probably should be concerned about this security breech.

Update: this has been fixed and user login details are no longer exposed. However, if you have any documents that are of a sensitive nature in your Grammarly account then you may want to remove them. Also, in any case like this, I urge you to go change your login details (change your password) at Grammarly.

[Read more…]

As you might recall, I decided to split my website into two separate websites. I moved content (mainly my services pages) over to Hartzer.com, leaving my 1000+ blog posts here on this blog. I’ll continue to blog and write news articles here on BillHartzer.com. The goal is to make BillHartzer.com more of a blog and news site–while moving my SEO Consulting business over to Hartzer.com and Hartzer Consulting. [Read more…]