Removing spyware

As a normal thing in the computer industry, this year viruses, spyware and trojans didn't fail to surprise us with their new infection methods.
We've seen ones infecting important system files in such way that when tried to cure the files they got deleted by the antivirus software. As a result the whole system failed to boot and we had to reinstall the Windows from the ground up.
The new variants were able to penetrate even through Safe mode - they loaded themselves as system drivers thus being unstoppable by the usual antivirus program shields.
And let's not forget the upgraded self modifying code: we've got a case of 1 virus detected by the AV software pretending to be of at least 100 other virus variants by constantly modifying its code.
Also lots of viruses were tracking their own files/memory loaded processes and when modified/deleted by the antivirus application, the whole system got restarted.
More and more spyware didn't touched the HOSTS file in order to redirect you to their own web pages, or slow your surfing, but directly modified the Windows core libraries(DLL-s) and Internet Transfer Protocols this way successfully blocking the antivirus update process, as well as the access the latter respectful websites.

In case that you might be infected but still unwilling to install Linux here are some practical advices that you can follow in order to remove the newest virus variants from your computer:

1. Safe mode booting is essential. Few antispyware products could successfully clean up infected process or file in normal mode. The ones that are free and worth mentioning are SpywareTerminator and Microsoft Security Essentials. In case of a stubborn one you might load up Live CD and then run your antivirus software.

2. If the virus is preventing you from updating your antivirus application, then just use a proxy server or find a mirror offering the latest program's definitions.

3. Perform scan using various applications: here is a list of the really good and free ones: DrWeb Cureit, a-squared free, malwarebytes anti malware, superantispyware. They have different scanning times as well as virus databases, but are proven effective in case of a strongly infected computer. And if you wish to have protection from a non-free software I would suggest you the fast one from DrWeb or Kaspersky Antivirus(if your machine is a fast one).

4. Exchange Avast, Norton, NOD32 and so on with AVG, Avira Antiviral Toolkit Pro or Spyware Terminator. The previous excellent Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware are now useless when faced with the new trojan variants.

5. Ensure that you've got constantly running access shield and be careful what you're allowing to run - here I could again recommend Spyware Terminator. by Nevyan Neykov

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SEO penalty checklist: keyword density, canonical urls

Below is a sample screen shot taken from Google Webmasters Tools Keywords tab. But why should one need such thing when you can right click your Firefox screen and use its integrated Show keyword density function?
Well, one benefit is that this function shows the specific keyword significance across your pages. Let me show you what do this means:
Suppose that you are optimizing a content for the keyword 'cars'. It's a normal practice to repeat 'cars' 2-3 times, style it in bold etc... Everything is good as long as you do it naturally. The moment you over stuff your page it'll get penalized and loose its current ranking in Google SERPS. So you have to be careful with the repetitions. Next, you can see the overall website keyword significance. And because Google likes thematic websites it is really important for these keywords to reflect your website purpose or theme. Otherwise you're just targeting the wrong visitors and shouldn't be puzzled from the high abandonment rate.

But enough with the theory now let's discuss how you can fix the things right up:

1. Keyword density
Check every individual webpage keyword density online and correct(reduce) those words that are being used over 2%. Again this % depends on your local keyword concurrency. So tolerable levels can vary up and down.

2. Canonical tags
Add the 'canonical' tag to all your website pages:

< link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/your_preferred_webpage_url.html" />

(and make sure to specify the url that you really prefer!). This line points the search engine to your exact legitimate webpage.
more info: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

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Blogger users
add the following code at the head section in your Template:

1) remove url parameters

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<link expr:href='data:blog.url' rel='canonical'/>
</b:if>

(this will remove the parameters appended at the end of the URL such as http://nevyan.blogspot.com/2009/12/test.html?showComment=1242753180000
and specify the original authority page: http://nevyan.blogspot.com/2009/12/test.html )

2) use meta noindex,follow on archive and label pages
Next to prevent duplicate references of your archive( i.e .../2009_01_01_archive.html) and label pages( i.e. /search/label/...) from getting indexed just add:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "archive"'>
<meta content='noindex,follow' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url != data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='noindex,follow' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
</b:if> 

3) block pages from showing in SERPS
go to: Settings->Search preferences, enable the usage of custom Robots.txt file and paste the following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /feeds/posts*
Disallow: /search/label*

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3. Have fun. For more information on the subject you can read: Deoptimising - a new way of SEO by Nevyan Neykov

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