Heading back to the valley

I was out of town Monday through today for a family reunion in New Jersey. It’ll still take me a day or two to catch up on email; I’m sitting in the Philadelphia airport right now. But I couldn’t pass up the chance to see family and get an authentic New Jersey hoagie. πŸ™‚

73 Responses to Heading back to the valley (Leave a comment)

  1. Boy Matt,

    You’ve been the traveling guy lately. Did you make it to the beach?

  2. I’d like to put that Jersey hoagie up against a Brooklyn one any day πŸ˜€

  3. I prefer the Philadelphia style of sandwich. Cheese, steak, peppers, onions, mushrooms, boo-ya!

  4. Safe travels M.

    Now it’s Aaron Wall’s turn to post.

  5. Where in Jersey, Matt?
    Some hot days to be here, but I guess it could have been worse. You could have been in Lebanon.

    I’m a bit south of Princeteon.

    Looking for a way to get up to New England with the family for a week. Maybe the mountains in New Hampshire to cool off a little.

  6. Philly Gal here! Colleagues of mine flew out of PHL yesterday and they had no AC — Sure hope they got that fixed by the time you got there.

    Did you hit any of the storms we had here yesterday?

    Next time you’re out this way you need to have a one of those “techie/seo/geek” dinners, there’s a few of us out this way that wouldn’t mind hosting. πŸ™‚

    have a safe trip back.

  7. Dude it’s a sub not a hoagie

  8. Hoagie? Boo south Jersey πŸ˜‰

  9. And why not just get a Philly Cheesesteak? πŸ™‚ I know of a place in Cherry Hill….

    And Matt… what is the Bay Area known for in terms of food. I’m going to be there for WordCamp and need to know good places…

  10. SO Matt, how many vacation days do you get at Google?

    So far this year, if I took as many days off as you, I’d have used up my last 7 years of vacation time… literally.

    I”m really jealous.

  11. Philly Cheesesteak rocks! Aaron, what’s the name of that place in Cherry Hill? Maybe it’s my place… πŸ™‚

  12. I thought they called it a Grinder in Jersey. Or is a grinder a totally different sandwich, like a Panini? I like to consider myself a fan of the sandwich, but seriously the world of sandwiches could stand to do some work on their brand recognition.

  13. Did you pick up a pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich too?

  14. Why not. If adsense was paying me half what Matt gets, i wont ever sit home πŸ™‚ Good luck.

  15. Liek others mentioned, you HAVE to grab a Philly Cheesesteak there!

    Have fun!

  16. One of us just created a VIRTUAL family reunion – no kidding !!!! – the relatives are Really spread out all over the globe – and all are techies – so it was no problem selling this idea then creating a conference in real-time, until the time comes when everyone could meet physically, if that time ever comes

    Just think of the fact that * tommorrow is never guaranteed for anyone * – meet anyway you can, whenever you can, to tell someone you care πŸ™‚

    Will be doing this once ever few months πŸ˜€

  17. Genova’s in Oaklyn makes the best hoagies and cheese steaks! Mmmm, cheese steak and a birtch beer…heaven.

  18. Dave (Original)

    RE: “hoagie” no idea what one is but they sound delicious!

  19. No such thing as a New Jersey Hoagie. It’s called a Philly Hoagie. Even in NJ. πŸ˜‰

  20. I think I want to work at Google with vacation time like that.

    I feel like the voice of Google for us webmasters has been sadly absent for the whole summer. You say that many others at Google can fill your shoes at anytime, I would like to see someone man your blog while you are gone.

  21. It could be worse. He could be a Canadian Senator. We had a guy a few years back that was paid an entire year for showing up in Ottawa for a day. So…1 days’ work, 365 days’ pay, with 364 of those days being spent in Mexico. I don’t see anything wrong with that math, do you?

    So how long until you’re that lazy, sipping tequilas in Acapulco while you throw pesos at a 12-year-old slave boy to work on webspam issues for you and collect mucho dineros, SeΓ±or Matt?

  22. No beach, Aaron. I just ducked in and out. Dave, I hadn’t seen these folks for 5-6 years, and didn’t know when I’d get a chance again, so I wanted to make sure I got to visit with them.

    Aaron Brazell, I wasn’t too far from Cherry Hill. Pine Barrens and the Jersey Devil, yah? graywolf, it will always be just a hoagie to me. I’m trying to remember the ingredients now. Ham, white cheese, salami, shredded lettucs, tomatoes, oil, oregano, and pepper. Mmmmm…

  23. Dave (Original)

    Hmmmmmmmmmm hooagies πŸ™‚

  24. The word is definitely β€œgrinder” [ http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Agrinder ] in Rhode Island. I’d always heard β€œsub” in Connecticut. I’ve never seen these things Italy despite their supposed origins. The word β€œPanino” (from pane, bread) just means sandwich – of any type.

  25. Sorry Matt, a search related question.

    Is there a super secret email address I can send spam reports or an actual URL for a spam report that works. I’ve been reporting a bunch of new subdomain-goobeltygook-random-number-letter spam sites that I’ve seen crop up lately but they continue to grow.

    This time they got smarter, they have a double-hyphen in the name so the site: command is rendered useless to track their progress.

  26. Dave (Original)
  27. Dave,

    Yes. Nothing happens. Ever. It’s a placebo as far as I can tell. That’s why I was asking Matt if they had some sort of super-secret task force with an email address working on the subdomain spam (a.k.a. Billions of Pages or ‘Bad Data Push’ with the Alexa rating that went to 2000 in a month).

    Found two more since posting originally, they are up to 500,000 pages each, they weren’t smart enough to use the “–” in the domain so we can’t watch them get pages in the index in real time.

  28. All right this isn’t WMW I can be specific for an example for you Matt.

    Try a search for: Goodman Amana HVAC

    Goofy keywords I know, but it means something to me.

    Anyway, 3 of the top 10, and 5 of the top 20 results are domains like 50934.m.etv–db4.org that are just 302 redirects to the infamous t1ps2see.com domain. For that search thats 25% to 30% spam on the first two pages of the SERPS. I figured they’d react to that, but no luck so far.

  29. Dave (Original)

    JLH, they use spam reports to modify theit algo. It’s rare for manual intervention.

  30. Dave (Original)

    I do agree though, those pages should be dumped ASAP.

  31. re nothing happens

    not so ive reported sites and had them canned

    I have just done this one http://www.link-pimp.com/ talk about beeing freeking obvious as a spam link site

  32. JLH, Try saarr.com , this might help you.

  33. You’re in Philly but did you head to South Street to get an authentic Philly cheesesteak?

  34. Ham, white cheese, salami, shredded lettucs, tomatoes, oil, oregano, and pepper. Mmmmm…

    I see you are doing great watching your cholesterol Matt! ;-(

  35. Hi Matt:

    Warning! this is off topic!

    Even though I am over 50 I am bravely working to add an RSS feed to my site. Is it proper to have duplicate content from my site in the RSS feed?

    Ted Z

  36. Ted, Yes.

  37. Hey Matt…

    Good to see you’re back.. Maybe you can explain the latest PR update.
    No, I’m not a pagerank-o-holic. but this time the update was very different
    and I wonder why.. what have changed?

    I have a lot of questions and assumptions after this interesting changes and
    I wonder how come no one talks about that. I guess people are sick talking
    about that damn toolbar… πŸ™‚

    We actually thought how funny it will be if the toolbar also had colors … heh
    I can imagine the forums getting full of strange posts saying “My PR turned blue!”

  38. sumit mehrotra

    Hi Matt,

    I think you got me wrong.I just need your guidance on the previous post.
    Hope you would help me in this regard.

    Thanks and Regards,
    Sumit Mehrotra

    PS: Let me know, if this is not appropriate.

  39. You think we have hot weather? Just google for “pale man in the desert” (with quotes) and you will learn about heat.

    But as for spam, write the name of a state and follow it with graphic design. Go past the first few pages and then all the results are for one domain. They must have 30,000 subdomains or more by my calculation with a doorway on each one. And sure, I reported it weeks ago. Oh well, I guess they are doing the best they can but I have learned not to expect every reported spammer to get canned.

  40. It’s a shame you didn’t get to the beach, while I was stayin with friends in Pennsylvania we headed over to Atlantic City for a weekend, it was quite nice (also the first time I saw the Atlantic ocean lol).

    Did you eat a lot of cheese steaks? πŸ˜€

  41. Here’s the deal..
    “Subs” originated in Connecticut. A local was making so many grinders for the naval base and electric boat (they build submarines) that they soon became known as subs.

    Apparently a grinder was so named because the italian bread used to make these snadwiches was very chewy and you really had to “grind” away while masticating.

    I saw on the food network that shops in Chicago make a grinder and then dip the entire sandwich, roll and all, into a big pot of Au Jus. What a mess to eat !

  42. Ted Z, I wouldn’t worry about that at all. Lots of websites have HTML pages and RSS feeds.

    JLH, you might try the spam report in Sitemaps. Since it’s authenticated, we can give those a little more weight. I saw what you were referring to though; usually those sites tend to be short-lived.

  43. wow that term Goodman Amana HVAC is worth some good money, think I’ll have to get into the AC selling biz! πŸ˜€

  44. ο»ΏHey Matt,

    Sorry to put a bummer on your Family Reunion, but I need to ask this. I tried to wait for a grab bag post but you have not done one in a while… sorry.

    Can you give us an idea of what google is doing to prevent or reduce javascript cloaking in googles results?

    For some competitive searches I am seeing 5,6 or 7 javascript cloaked listings in the top ten results (That’s 50%, 60% and 70% SPAM). If you want the queries just ask, I have also forwarded them to googles spam reporting page.

    The longer you guys at google take to remove all the javascript cloaked pages from your results, the more javascript cloaked pages you (and everyone else) are going to see.

    The longer these pages stay up, the more money they generate for the spammers. If google were to remove these pages in say less than 24 hours, the financial motivation to put all this spam in your index would be gone and so would the spam.

    Letting the javascript cloaked SPAM stay in the results for weeks and weeks and weeks, after google knows about it, is just wrong, IMO.

  45. Hello from “The Daily Grind” coffee shop in Harrisonburg VA where I’m catching up before our big family reunion. SEW that’s a neat idea (virtual family reunion), though I’ll have to get my relatives back online for that – several of the older folks quit the internet due to spams and viruses.
    (I guess this is what happens when Matt takes a long vacation…all online hell breaks loose)

  46. Thanks for the response Matt. I’ll do a bunch through sitemaps this afternoon.

  47. Dirty Jersey baby! Represent!

    What area of Jersey?

  48. “Lots of websites have HTML pages and RSS feeds.”

    aahhhhh like most imports come from other countries,. πŸ™‚

  49. Hey Matt,

    I’m potentially going to jump the gun a bit here, but is there going to be any future discussion of the Accessibility search that’s in Beta right now, and how much of a factor it will be in regular searching?

    Sorry for the off-topic post, but having seen the Beta for the first time today, I think the thing kicks serious ass.

    For those who have no idea what I’m referring to:

    http://labs.google.com/accessible/

  50. Matt;

    Just wanted to let you know how much I am looking forward to attending your blogging session at SES San Jose..

    You’re going to love the t-shirt I’ll be sporting!!

    ~AudBall

  51. >>No such thing as a New Jersey Hoagie. It’s called a Philly Hoagie. Even in NJ.

    I’ve lived in NJ all my life and we call ’em submarine sandwiches. Hoagie really is a Pennsylvania term.

    Grew up in Oakland (NJ), now living in Westfield.

  52. Matt,

    Have you seen anyone else having the blank cached pages problem?

    Hope you have a good time at the family reunion.

    I spent alot of time in Wildwood NJ while growing up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

  53. Testing; ignore.

  54. Sub is east coast, Hoagie is Pennsylvania, and Grinder is a Mid-west thang

  55. Thanks for the post adam
    http://labs.google.com/accessible/
    I want those rankings, does the accessible site have filters turned off. I wonder if I’m doing something spammy because regular google does not show me that much love.
    Maybe Google labs can come up with a spam rank tool

  56. Testing; ignore.

    Testing that hiccup there Matt? πŸ˜‰

  57. Dave (Original)

    OFF_TOPIC:

    Today is a great day for White hats. looks like SEO Inc spammy methods have caught up with them AGAIN. Hopefully they will go bankrupt and never appear again.

    KUDOS to Google & Matt personally!

  58. Someone said that the captcha wasn’t working (even had a video). But it works fine for me (for what it is). Ironically, when I went to go say that in his comments, I ran afoul of his private spam detection, and so my comment wasn’t approved on his site! πŸ™‚

  59. Oh no, you are NOT from New Jersey Matt. No. I refuse to believe that a guy whose never read the Godfather is from *MY* state. Please say it ain’t so. The family *moved* there, right? πŸ˜‰

  60. Matt,

    Did the person complaining about it not see a security code section at all? If so, it may be because they had Javascript disabled.

    Go into Firefox and disable the Javascript. It shows up at the bottom when you do that.

    I did a test post (right before this one), so if you don’t see it, that’s probably what it is.

  61. Whoops…ignore the part about not seeing the security section. I meant to say “see it above the textarea box for the post”. My bad.

  62. Thanks for the post adam
    http://labs.google.com/accessible/
    I want those rankings, does the accessible site have filters turned off. I wonder if I’m doing something spammy because regular google does not show me that much love.
    Maybe Google labs can come up with a spam rank tool

    You and me both, buddy.

    From the FAQ:

    How does Accessible Search work?
    In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully — pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op’s technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.

    So it looks like they’re examining markup and basing the rankings off of accessibility standards.

    The interesting thing about it is that Craig’s List shows up quite a bit everywhere in it. Not really sure if that’s a bug or what, because that site is a bit of a mess. But it’s interesting.

    Talk about stuff like this more, Matt. You’ve got a captive audience of at least…2. πŸ™‚

  63. Dear Matt, As a Podcaster and Blogger, I’m not sure where I am in the spectrum, but I want to say I appreciate your thoughtful evaluation of the Podcasters News statement. As a member of the Podcasters News Netswork (different organization I think at podcasternews.com), I think you are correct in your evaluation.

    I want to add that a lot of people listen to you and want to know what you have to say about a particular topic. Please take a moment and read my blog for today at muffinmanmusings.blogspot.com and let me know if you feel the same way. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

  64. Yeah I often get the captcha failing πŸ™

  65. I didn’t know you were a Jersey boy, how cool! I grew up in Millington, NJ, bet you never heard of it. Anyways I was wondering, how come you aren’t running adsense on your blog? You really should be using your own products! You could donate the proceeds to your fav charity or something.

  66. How was the weather up there ?

  67. How do you block spammers on blog ?

  68. WE LOVE CHEESESTEAKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  69. Cheesteaks do what cheesesteaks are.

  70. ”It’ll still take me a day or two to catch up on email”

    haha just don’t try to catch up and use the magic ‘delete’ button.
    really helpful if you want some free time πŸ˜€

  71. If you want the definitive hoagie & cheesesteak ratings go to the following website.

    hollyeats.com

  72. I just had dinner (mmmm prawn curry) and yet, reading this thread makes me hungry again!

  73. Hoagies and Cheesesteaks FTW!

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