But enough of that.

If you're an Australian business, with your website hosted within Australia, mandatory internet filtering in the minimal form proposed is no cause for direct concern. Don't panic, don't run for the hills, and certainly don't, whatever you do, move your site overseas. Here's why:

1. It's not going to destroy the internet. People will still shop online.
   
   When it comes into effect, expect media interest for a few days, maybe some mild panic. Expect Youtube to run slower, and possibly Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia, and others. Expect torrents of angry correspondence from internet users. Expect the minister to tell us everything is going fine, and most likely to continue accusing people who criticise the policy of being pro-child pornography.
   
   But also expect that when people want to find businesses in your industry, or buy your products, that they'll still Consult The Google. Or even better, your website. Internet use is far too entrenched now to be fundamentally changed by this. People who want to get around the filter will get around the filter, and the vast majority of people will go about their daily doings without change.
    
2. If you're hosted within Australia, you won't get blacklisted.
   
   The scope of the filtering regime to be implemented is, in summary, that material hosted overseas that would be Refused Classification (as a result of being excessively explicit, violent, etc) will be blocked by all Internet Service Providers in Australia. Primarily this will cover foreign businesses, however Australian businesses can be affected. When there was a 'leak' a few months back of what may-or-may-not have been the ACMA blacklist, it did contain a few Australian businesses. These fell into two categories:
   
   
   • Australian businesses producing RC, potentially RC, or R18+/X18+ content (primarily pornography). For a number of years now, hosting of pornographic material within Australia has been heavily restricted, where legal at all. While whether it's outside the scope of the filter to block some of this material is an open question, it's outside the scope of what I'm talking about here, as this material is not generally hosted within Australia.
      
   • Australian businesses (a tour operator is one mentioned) who were unfortunate enough to have their websites hacked/defaced with RC material, and were hosted overseas.
   
   Now for the first one, well, yes, you're in trouble, but as I said that's outside the scope of what I'm talking about. For the second group, you're also in trouble, but it's fixable.
   
   Hacking of websites has become the number one vector for infection of computers with malware. Malware and the porn industry online are closely linked (think of how much spam spruiks porn - sex sells!). Thus if your website is compromised by a malicious third party there's a good chance they're going to use it to push viruses, spam, pornography, or all three. All of which puts you as a website owner at risk of being determined to be publishing RC content and thus blacklisted, completely unwittingly, without notice or easy recourse to have yourself unblocked.
   
   Here's the kicker, though: This is only a problem if you're hosted overseas. Websites hosted within Australia are subject to takedown notices rather than blacklisting. Your hosting provider (such as us) would receive notification from ACMA of the content subject to a complaint, and a request that it be taken offline. A sensible hosting provider would pass this notice on, and suspend publication of your site until the issue is resolved (or possibly just remove the problematic content). Not a great position to be in, but far better than the alternative - you won't suddenly disappear from the internet for everyone in Australia. At least, not without being told why and given a chance to rectify the situation.
    
3. The mechanisms proposed will further slow down some or many overseas websites, but won't affect the speed of any domestically-hosted sites.
   
   The Enex test lab report discussed a few methods of filtering, but the primary (and what seems from my perspective the best way to achieve the stated aims) is what's called "Pass-by" filtering. In a nutshell, this works as follows:
   
   
   • Joe Public enters a web address (URL) into their browser, eg http://www.example.com/content/illegal.html
     
     
   • Their computer uses DNS to convert www.example.com into an IP Address of a server which hosts that site, e.g. 123.45.67.89
     
     
   • The request for that page leaves the customer computer headed for the destination IP Address
      
   • At the ISP, routing hardware is configured to re-route all traffic headed for IP Addresses corresponding to websites with content on the blacklist through their filtering equipment (this is theoretically possible to achieve with zero impact on traffic for other addresses)
      
   • The filtering equipment checks the URL being requested against the blacklist, and blocks the request if the URL is found to be on it
      
   • Otherwise, the traffic is allowed to continue as normal
   
   What this means is that if you share servers with a website found on the blacklist, all requests for your website will run slower, as they'll pass through the an additional filtering step, even if nothing on your website is blacklisted.
   
   This is why we can expect that Facebook and Youtube, and other sites with a broad array of user-supplied content, will run slower, as no doubt Facebook and Youtube URLs will (or at least should under the aims of the policy) appear on the blacklist. On the other hand, the Enex report noted that high traffic websites were capable of causing filtering to overload, so ACMA may choose not to blacklist content on such high-traffic sites.
   
   If you're hosted in Australia, you have no chance of attracting the performance penalty resulting from sharing servers with a blacklisted website, as Australian-hosted sites will not be blacklisted.
   
   If you're hosted internationally, especially on high volume, low cost hosting providers with huge numbers of clients, expect a performance hit.
    
4. Access to Australian-hosted sites for international visitors won't be slowed by the filter.
   
   Notwithstanding filtering regimes present in other countries, the filtering to be implemented here is implemented at an ISP level between the end-user and the rest of the Internet, and not at a hosting provider level or above. This means that it doesn't entail any filtering being put in the way of people overseas trying to view your site.
   
   ... so your overseas customers aren't affected either.

I have grave concerns about this policy, as do many others. But I also accept that like it or not, it's probably going to happen. Fortunately for us, it doesn't directly affect our business, or our customers. And while the stated aims look fine - in theory and/or on paper - I doubt all this will achieve much beyond that the ALP will curry favour with certain influential lobbies, and a large number of Australians - who never would have imagined doing so before - are soon going to become intimately familiar with using overseas proxy servers. And I'm not sure that's a good thing for anyone except proxy service providers.

* ...for your website, if you're hosted in Australia.

But that's not the only issue facing SEO professionals and more specifically, companies that specialise in offering SEO services. While the viability of SEO's future is hotly debated, the demand for SEO services has never been greater. New clients all want SEO services; they rightly want to rank better than their competitors in Google. The problem is, as more and more websites are optimised, it becomes harder and harder for SEO specialists to deliver on the promises they make.

Scepticism is on the rise. The volume of spam promoting SEO services has reached epidemic proportions, associating SEO specialists with those touting p*nis enlargements and Nigerian bank scams. In some cases, this association is justified - I’m not sure where the E fits into things but I’m pretty sure that when it comes to a lot of people out there the S and the O stand for Snake and Oil.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) focuses on improving the position of a website in search engine search results for specific keywords and key phrases with the aim of increasing the number of visitors to that website. The effectiveness is measured by changes in position in Search Engine Result Pages and any increases in the number of visitors referred by those search engines. But the real measure of success of any web strategy should be how many additional enquiries and sales a website generates as a result.

It’s all very well to perform well in search engine results, but if your actual website doesn’t perform (convert visits to enquiries and sales) then much of what you’ve achieved will be wasted. For instance, there’s no point stuffing your content with keywords if the content then becomes illegible to humans. Getting more visitors to your website won’t accomplish very much if their first inclination when they arrive is to leave and never come back.

We’ve had enquiries from website owners wanting SEO services for websites that looked like a dog’s breakfast with usability to match. The crazy thing is that those website owners generally aren’t interested in hearing about the need for a redesign and a restructuring of their websites - they just wanted someone to provide them with SEO as if it’s something that can be done in the background, in isolation from their actual website. Those website owners will inevitably find an SEO specialist who will promise them improved results within search engines without exploring or explaining the need for changes to design and usability.

The problem is that many SEO specialists make recommendations based on what they can charge for. There is no incentive for making recommendations that could improve the performance of a website if the SEO specialist is not able to charge for those changes. If anything, given the budgetary constraints of most clients, there is actually a disincentive to recommend changes to design and usability if those changes need to be implemented by the client’s web designer or web developer, because all of a sudden there’s less money available for the SEO specialist’s services.

As content management systems improve and incorporate many of the features usually recommended by SEO specialists, there will be less of a need for SEO specialists to make those recommendations. The range of recommendations provided by SEO specialists will narrow as a consequence and I can see many of the less adaptable SEO specialists becoming irrelevant.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that SEO practices themselves will become irrelevant, just that SEO specialists will struggle if they don’t adapt and recognise that SEO is only one part of a website's performance. As clients start to recognise the need to focus their website around their broader marketing strategy and optimise for maximum conversions as well as for optimal search engine search results, they are more likely to look to providers offering both web design and web development in conjunction with SEO services.

As Bing establishes more market share, more and more attention will need to be paid to the effect of changes to websites on search results in Bing. This should result in SEO professionals spending less time chasing the tail of the Google search engine algorithm, and more time establishing techniques which work well no matter what state the algorithm is in. There will be less call for probing for better results and more call for establishing better tried and tested techniques.

In Australia however Google dominates market share, and the wave of change felt throughout the U.S. will feel more like ripples. But Microsoft hasn’t really started marketing Bing in Australia yet. You can be sure that once they do, they’ll do it in a big way. They will gain market share and the landscape will change for Australian SEO professionals too.

I think companies that specialise in SEO are in for a bumpy ride ahead, and may find it tough going in a couple of years time. Whatever happens I hope (probably in vain) that SEO spam becomes a thing of the past - it's a blight on the industry.

It's easy to forget just how much Google changed online search. These days it's difficult to imagine a world without Google Search (and Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Documents, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Google Trends... ).

Earlier this month Microsoft launched Bing, a replacement for Live Search (formerly Windows Live Search, formerly MSN search....) . Bing claimed to be a "decision engine" and I think they hoped or expected Bing to be another Google - the beginning of a dramatic change in the way we search online.

But after using it over the past few weeks all I see is... another Google. To me, It looks like Google with a new colour scheme. Only the search results aren't what I'm looking for... so I'm officially giving up and going back to Google.

Now it could be because I'm using the Australian version of Bing and all of the amazing things that make Bing so amazingly different are only in the US version of Bing, even so I am skeptical that another Search Engine could take over from Google the way Google eclipsed Alta Vista. Web Search was ripe for overthrow simply because nothing we had was any good. Google, unlike anything else at the time, just plain worked.

Given that Google does work, very well, it's hard to see another search engine taking over. For there to be another revolution in the way people seek information online there needs to be a leap as big (if not bigger) than there was between web directories (such as Yahoo! and Alta Vista back in the 90s) and search engines.