Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

To many abbreviations and rather dry, 27 Nov 2008
I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

What a good book, 05 Nov 2008
This is a really good book - informative and easy to follow and full of useful tips and know-how.

Welcome to the Magic Circle, 21 Jun 2008
Search Engine Optimisation has acquired a status which might be regarded similar to that of the magic circle:
It's secretive - only those in the circle really know the tricks
There's an element of magic - SEOs do things we don't understand
It's competitive - we all want to get to the top
It's closed - those within the circle do not disclose all the tricks
They even categorise their tricks as good and bad with the terms "white hat" and "black hat"

Well, in this excellent new book David Viney has let us all into the circle, and what we learn is that it's not magic!

However, I should like to follow that statement by immediately saying that it is plainly not easy either. Also, by the very nature of the fierce competition for the top spots, it will always be competitive, and you will always have to work at it.

What this particular magician sets out for us all here is a structure and a method which we might follow to improve our own success.

The author uses the analogy of cookery; there are ingredients, recipes to follow - and I would add, a great deal of time needed to be spent in the kitchen!!

You will be surprised to learn the breadth of things that you will need to do to be in with a competitive chance. The book covers the many factors that contribute to your ultimate success. I was surprised at just how many areas contribute to a site becoming successful, in 240 pages David Viney covers a lot of ground.

The title is so clever; Step 1 in David's plan focuses on finding the "phrases that pay", and sure enough, the title of his book is of course just one such example - nicely wraps-up in a phrase what the book is all about AND is what we are all searching for!

As other reviewers have written here, the book strikes an excellent balance in readability, suitable for reading and use by other professional SEOs and equally works very well for the novice.

The seven step procedure does categorise the areas of focus well, and does give a guide to chronology, but it's not his intention that you should remain in a step until you have done everything you possibly can, more that you need to do a wide number of things, and that over the longer period you will need to track back and forth through the steps and re-visit activities.

The book does a great job of illustrating the size of the market, the strength and importance of Google in that market, and the potential prizes available to the top of page one winners.

"Having your site in the top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town."

You should buy and read this book before building your website, probably even before naming you business. The tips within it on subjects such as targetting a niche, phrases that pay, finding and targeting keywords, domain names, hosting locations, etc. are all key considerations in the choices you should make in the very early days.

But there's no need to worry if you are already well into the life of your business and your website, there is plenty within this book for all to heed and follow.

I would strongly recommend the book to anybody interested in getting their website "to the top on Google", you will learn a great deal, and will be able to take action based upon the guidance within the book.

However, go into this exercise with the awareness that it is a long game. You may read the book in just a few hours, but you will need to work persistently at your website's optimisation continuously to reach the top and stay there .........The prizes are Great. It is fiercely competitive. The web is continuously evolving. Your competitors will read this book too.

This is probably the best book on this subject that you can buy.
Take the first step, buy and read the book.
Then keep it next to your computer, keep dipping into it, follow its recommendations.
Then, be prepared to buy an updated version or follow-up next year, with more and new recommendations for you to implement!

The Mother of all SEO Books, 16 Jun 2008
I want to keep this short and sweet as copywriting is not my strong point. If you are looking for a book that spells out the key issues on SEO in an order that actually makes logical sense - then this is the book for you. Rather than a book full of information (although it is very informative) - its best used a step-by-step tool to any SEO project. I can understand why one of the reviewers read it twice.

I had purchased SEO for Dummies but that was really a 'bits n pieces' kind of book and left me unguided. This book follows a chronological path and makes you stick to it.

I shall be using it on every SEO project from now on.

5/5

Buy IT! BUY IT!, 19 May 2008
I have read this book from cover to cover TWICE!!! Then I bought my collegue a copy for his birthday so he wouldn't keep taking mine!!
This is full of practical knowledge to get you up and going and also a great reference book for the more knowledgable. BUY IT NOW!!! You wont be dissapointed!!

Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

To many abbreviations and rather dry, 27 Nov 2008
I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

What a good book, 05 Nov 2008
This is a really good book - informative and easy to follow and full of useful tips and know-how.

Welcome to the Magic Circle, 21 Jun 2008
Search Engine Optimisation has acquired a status which might be regarded similar to that of the magic circle:
It's secretive - only those in the circle really know the tricks
There's an element of magic - SEOs do things we don't understand
It's competitive - we all want to get to the top
It's closed - those within the circle do not disclose all the tricks
They even categorise their tricks as good and bad with the terms "white hat" and "black hat"

Well, in this excellent new book David Viney has let us all into the circle, and what we learn is that it's not magic!

However, I should like to follow that statement by immediately saying that it is plainly not easy either. Also, by the very nature of the fierce competition for the top spots, it will always be competitive, and you will always have to work at it.

What this particular magician sets out for us all here is a structure and a method which we might follow to improve our own success.

The author uses the analogy of cookery; there are ingredients, recipes to follow - and I would add, a great deal of time needed to be spent in the kitchen!!

You will be surprised to learn the breadth of things that you will need to do to be in with a competitive chance. The book covers the many factors that contribute to your ultimate success. I was surprised at just how many areas contribute to a site becoming successful, in 240 pages David Viney covers a lot of ground.

The title is so clever; Step 1 in David's plan focuses on finding the "phrases that pay", and sure enough, the title of his book is of course just one such example - nicely wraps-up in a phrase what the book is all about AND is what we are all searching for!

As other reviewers have written here, the book strikes an excellent balance in readability, suitable for reading and use by other professional SEOs and equally works very well for the novice.

The seven step procedure does categorise the areas of focus well, and does give a guide to chronology, but it's not his intention that you should remain in a step until you have done everything you possibly can, more that you need to do a wide number of things, and that over the longer period you will need to track back and forth through the steps and re-visit activities.

The book does a great job of illustrating the size of the market, the strength and importance of Google in that market, and the potential prizes available to the top of page one winners.

"Having your site in the top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town."

You should buy and read this book before building your website, probably even before naming you business. The tips within it on subjects such as targetting a niche, phrases that pay, finding and targeting keywords, domain names, hosting locations, etc. are all key considerations in the choices you should make in the very early days.

But there's no need to worry if you are already well into the life of your business and your website, there is plenty within this book for all to heed and follow.

I would strongly recommend the book to anybody interested in getting their website "to the top on Google", you will learn a great deal, and will be able to take action based upon the guidance within the book.

However, go into this exercise with the awareness that it is a long game. You may read the book in just a few hours, but you will need to work persistently at your website's optimisation continuously to reach the top and stay there .........The prizes are Great. It is fiercely competitive. The web is continuously evolving. Your competitors will read this book too.

This is probably the best book on this subject that you can buy.
Take the first step, buy and read the book.
Then keep it next to your computer, keep dipping into it, follow its recommendations.
Then, be prepared to buy an updated version or follow-up next year, with more and new recommendations for you to implement!

The Mother of all SEO Books, 16 Jun 2008
I want to keep this short and sweet as copywriting is not my strong point. If you are looking for a book that spells out the key issues on SEO in an order that actually makes logical sense - then this is the book for you. Rather than a book full of information (although it is very informative) - its best used a step-by-step tool to any SEO project. I can understand why one of the reviewers read it twice.

I had purchased SEO for Dummies but that was really a 'bits n pieces' kind of book and left me unguided. This book follows a chronological path and makes you stick to it.

I shall be using it on every SEO project from now on.

5/5

Buy IT! BUY IT!, 19 May 2008
I have read this book from cover to cover TWICE!!! Then I bought my collegue a copy for his birthday so he wouldn't keep taking mine!!
This is full of practical knowledge to get you up and going and also a great reference book for the more knowledgable. BUY IT NOW!!! You wont be dissapointed!!

If you need solid data on the power of the digital generation this has it, 26 Nov 2008
Whilst Godin's Tribes tells the tale of the causes that are powered by sharing across the web, gathering an communicating. This book approaches it with more science, more facts, more figures.
It shows the generational change, the expectations powered by the web and web2.0, user created content, the ability to self publish and self organize and how that effects the expectations of the upcoming workforce.
It also though does not suggest it is over for those not growing up digital. This can be used and learned by anyone. Just dont ignore it, dont brush it all off as silly, just chatting on the web etc.
It provides the kind of solid research and breadth that many potential wavering business leaders and managers may need to understand their new role in the changing society.

Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

To many abbreviations and rather dry, 27 Nov 2008
I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

What a good book, 05 Nov 2008
This is a really good book - informative and easy to follow and full of useful tips and know-how.

Welcome to the Magic Circle, 21 Jun 2008
Search Engine Optimisation has acquired a status which might be regarded similar to that of the magic circle:
It's secretive - only those in the circle really know the tricks
There's an element of magic - SEOs do things we don't understand
It's competitive - we all want to get to the top
It's closed - those within the circle do not disclose all the tricks
They even categorise their tricks as good and bad with the terms "white hat" and "black hat"

Well, in this excellent new book David Viney has let us all into the circle, and what we learn is that it's not magic!

However, I should like to follow that statement by immediately saying that it is plainly not easy either. Also, by the very nature of the fierce competition for the top spots, it will always be competitive, and you will always have to work at it.

What this particular magician sets out for us all here is a structure and a method which we might follow to improve our own success.

The author uses the analogy of cookery; there are ingredients, recipes to follow - and I would add, a great deal of time needed to be spent in the kitchen!!

You will be surprised to learn the breadth of things that you will need to do to be in with a competitive chance. The book covers the many factors that contribute to your ultimate success. I was surprised at just how many areas contribute to a site becoming successful, in 240 pages David Viney covers a lot of ground.

The title is so clever; Step 1 in David's plan focuses on finding the "phrases that pay", and sure enough, the title of his book is of course just one such example - nicely wraps-up in a phrase what the book is all about AND is what we are all searching for!

As other reviewers have written here, the book strikes an excellent balance in readability, suitable for reading and use by other professional SEOs and equally works very well for the novice.

The seven step procedure does categorise the areas of focus well, and does give a guide to chronology, but it's not his intention that you should remain in a step until you have done everything you possibly can, more that you need to do a wide number of things, and that over the longer period you will need to track back and forth through the steps and re-visit activities.

The book does a great job of illustrating the size of the market, the strength and importance of Google in that market, and the potential prizes available to the top of page one winners.

"Having your site in the top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town."

You should buy and read this book before building your website, probably even before naming you business. The tips within it on subjects such as targetting a niche, phrases that pay, finding and targeting keywords, domain names, hosting locations, etc. are all key considerations in the choices you should make in the very early days.

But there's no need to worry if you are already well into the life of your business and your website, there is plenty within this book for all to heed and follow.

I would strongly recommend the book to anybody interested in getting their website "to the top on Google", you will learn a great deal, and will be able to take action based upon the guidance within the book.

However, go into this exercise with the awareness that it is a long game. You may read the book in just a few hours, but you will need to work persistently at your website's optimisation continuously to reach the top and stay there .........The prizes are Great. It is fiercely competitive. The web is continuously evolving. Your competitors will read this book too.

This is probably the best book on this subject that you can buy.
Take the first step, buy and read the book.
Then keep it next to your computer, keep dipping into it, follow its recommendations.
Then, be prepared to buy an updated version or follow-up next year, with more and new recommendations for you to implement!

The Mother of all SEO Books, 16 Jun 2008
I want to keep this short and sweet as copywriting is not my strong point. If you are looking for a book that spells out the key issues on SEO in an order that actually makes logical sense - then this is the book for you. Rather than a book full of information (although it is very informative) - its best used a step-by-step tool to any SEO project. I can understand why one of the reviewers read it twice.

I had purchased SEO for Dummies but that was really a 'bits n pieces' kind of book and left me unguided. This book follows a chronological path and makes you stick to it.

I shall be using it on every SEO project from now on.

5/5

Buy IT! BUY IT!, 19 May 2008
I have read this book from cover to cover TWICE!!! Then I bought my collegue a copy for his birthday so he wouldn't keep taking mine!!
This is full of practical knowledge to get you up and going and also a great reference book for the more knowledgable. BUY IT NOW!!! You wont be dissapointed!!

If you need solid data on the power of the digital generation this has it, 26 Nov 2008
Whilst Godin's Tribes tells the tale of the causes that are powered by sharing across the web, gathering an communicating. This book approaches it with more science, more facts, more figures.
It shows the generational change, the expectations powered by the web and web2.0, user created content, the ability to self publish and self organize and how that effects the expectations of the upcoming workforce.
It also though does not suggest it is over for those not growing up digital. This can be used and learned by anyone. Just dont ignore it, dont brush it all off as silly, just chatting on the web etc.
It provides the kind of solid research and breadth that many potential wavering business leaders and managers may need to understand their new role in the changing society.


Disappointing, 30 Jun 2005
Hhmm, I must say, I did not like this one very much. I think it is not a bad book at all, but it does not really deliver what it promises. At least I exspected a whole different information!

The book is really written for people who do not know ANYTHING about the internet and about marketing. It explains the plain basics about how important it is these days to have a webpage and how you can bring your business forward if you have web presence.
It did not teach me anything about Internet marketing that I did not know, and I do not know much to be honest. I just started in this business of marketing, and although it is a lot of fun, I would love to have more information in a book.

This book tries to explain to much, that you really do not want to know, it explains how to get a webpage, how to decide if you need a webdesigner or not and stuff like that.

It does not offer any information about blogs, e-zines, newsletters, adsense, adwords, mailing lists and so on.

I was very disappointed. Perhaps it is a good book for someone who is thinking about going into the web without knowing anything about it, but, I do not really think there are that much of this kind of people around.

Easy to understand. Help me a lot with my course, 13 Dec 2000
I recently discovered this book in the Library at Poole College. I was really impressed with the material it covered. The marketing book that I was using for my coursework was sometimes hard going and I was finding it difficult to understand the "Jargon". However, this book explained the procedure in a more understandable way, ensuring that I was comprehensive with tasks set for me.

I have also been instructed to undertake two subjects for which I have chosen "Designing a simple website (if there is one!!), and Market Research. I found the book to contain all the relevant material to get me started and also gave me some good sites or people to contact to help me further with my study.

The book also contained "Tips" and "Useful Contacts" which enabled me to search through other books to gain information.

Very easy to understand. I hope they have done one for advanced marketing!!

Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

To many abbreviations and rather dry, 27 Nov 2008
I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

What a good book, 05 Nov 2008
This is a really good book - informative and easy to follow and full of useful tips and know-how.

Welcome to the Magic Circle, 21 Jun 2008
Search Engine Optimisation has acquired a status which might be regarded similar to that of the magic circle:
It's secretive - only those in the circle really know the tricks
There's an element of magic - SEOs do things we don't understand
It's competitive - we all want to get to the top
It's closed - those within the circle do not disclose all the tricks
They even categorise their tricks as good and bad with the terms "white hat" and "black hat"

Well, in this excellent new book David Viney has let us all into the circle, and what we learn is that it's not magic!

However, I should like to follow that statement by immediately saying that it is plainly not easy either. Also, by the very nature of the fierce competition for the top spots, it will always be competitive, and you will always have to work at it.

What this particular magician sets out for us all here is a structure and a method which we might follow to improve our own success.

The author uses the analogy of cookery; there are ingredients, recipes to follow - and I would add, a great deal of time needed to be spent in the kitchen!!

You will be surprised to learn the breadth of things that you will need to do to be in with a competitive chance. The book covers the many factors that contribute to your ultimate success. I was surprised at just how many areas contribute to a site becoming successful, in 240 pages David Viney covers a lot of ground.

The title is so clever; Step 1 in David's plan focuses on finding the "phrases that pay", and sure enough, the title of his book is of course just one such example - nicely wraps-up in a phrase what the book is all about AND is what we are all searching for!

As other reviewers have written here, the book strikes an excellent balance in readability, suitable for reading and use by other professional SEOs and equally works very well for the novice.

The seven step procedure does categorise the areas of focus well, and does give a guide to chronology, but it's not his intention that you should remain in a step until you have done everything you possibly can, more that you need to do a wide number of things, and that over the longer period you will need to track back and forth through the steps and re-visit activities.

The book does a great job of illustrating the size of the market, the strength and importance of Google in that market, and the potential prizes available to the top of page one winners.

"Having your site in the top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town."

You should buy and read this book before building your website, probably even before naming you business. The tips within it on subjects such as targetting a niche, phrases that pay, finding and targeting keywords, domain names, hosting locations, etc. are all key considerations in the choices you should make in the very early days.

But there's no need to worry if you are already well into the life of your business and your website, there is plenty within this book for all to heed and follow.

I would strongly recommend the book to anybody interested in getting their website "to the top on Google", you will learn a great deal, and will be able to take action based upon the guidance within the book.

However, go into this exercise with the awareness that it is a long game. You may read the book in just a few hours, but you will need to work persistently at your website's optimisation continuously to reach the top and stay there .........The prizes are Great. It is fiercely competitive. The web is continuously evolving. Your competitors will read this book too.

This is probably the best book on this subject that you can buy.
Take the first step, buy and read the book.
Then keep it next to your computer, keep dipping into it, follow its recommendations.
Then, be prepared to buy an updated version or follow-up next year, with more and new recommendations for you to implement!

The Mother of all SEO Books, 16 Jun 2008
I want to keep this short and sweet as copywriting is not my strong point. If you are looking for a book that spells out the key issues on SEO in an order that actually makes logical sense - then this is the book for you. Rather than a book full of information (although it is very informative) - its best used a step-by-step tool to any SEO project. I can understand why one of the reviewers read it twice.

I had purchased SEO for Dummies but that was really a 'bits n pieces' kind of book and left me unguided. This book follows a chronological path and makes you stick to it.

I shall be using it on every SEO project from now on.

5/5

Buy IT! BUY IT!, 19 May 2008
I have read this book from cover to cover TWICE!!! Then I bought my collegue a copy for his birthday so he wouldn't keep taking mine!!
This is full of practical knowledge to get you up and going and also a great reference book for the more knowledgable. BUY IT NOW!!! You wont be dissapointed!!

If you need solid data on the power of the digital generation this has it, 26 Nov 2008
Whilst Godin's Tribes tells the tale of the causes that are powered by sharing across the web, gathering an communicating. This book approaches it with more science, more facts, more figures.
It shows the generational change, the expectations powered by the web and web2.0, user created content, the ability to self publish and self organize and how that effects the expectations of the upcoming workforce.
It also though does not suggest it is over for those not growing up digital. This can be used and learned by anyone. Just dont ignore it, dont brush it all off as silly, just chatting on the web etc.
It provides the kind of solid research and breadth that many potential wavering business leaders and managers may need to understand their new role in the changing society.


Disappointing, 30 Jun 2005
Hhmm, I must say, I did not like this one very much. I think it is not a bad book at all, but it does not really deliver what it promises. At least I exspected a whole different information!

The book is really written for people who do not know ANYTHING about the internet and about marketing. It explains the plain basics about how important it is these days to have a webpage and how you can bring your business forward if you have web presence.
It did not teach me anything about Internet marketing that I did not know, and I do not know much to be honest. I just started in this business of marketing, and although it is a lot of fun, I would love to have more information in a book.

This book tries to explain to much, that you really do not want to know, it explains how to get a webpage, how to decide if you need a webdesigner or not and stuff like that.

It does not offer any information about blogs, e-zines, newsletters, adsense, adwords, mailing lists and so on.

I was very disappointed. Perhaps it is a good book for someone who is thinking about going into the web without knowing anything about it, but, I do not really think there are that much of this kind of people around.

Easy to understand. Help me a lot with my course, 13 Dec 2000
I recently discovered this book in the Library at Poole College. I was really impressed with the material it covered. The marketing book that I was using for my coursework was sometimes hard going and I was finding it difficult to understand the "Jargon". However, this book explained the procedure in a more understandable way, ensuring that I was comprehensive with tasks set for me.

I have also been instructed to undertake two subjects for which I have chosen "Designing a simple website (if there is one!!), and Market Research. I found the book to contain all the relevant material to get me started and also gave me some good sites or people to contact to help me further with my study.

The book also contained "Tips" and "Useful Contacts" which enabled me to search through other books to gain information.

Very easy to understand. I hope they have done one for advanced marketing!!

Excellent book-the only one you really need for marketing of a SME business, 11 Aug 2008
I have bought a lot of business and marketing books and whilst some leave a lot to the imagination and motivation, this book hits the nail on the head every single time.

The book goes through everything clearly and explains in simple words why guerrilla marketing is the way forward especially for those businesses on a small budget.

I have only read a small part in this book however keep 'dipping' into Jays wealth of knowledge. I had thought about looking at gift vouchers for my business and how will go ahead with them as Jays book explains why vouchers are important to those in retail.

There is an in-depth list of skills and qualities we have but we often do not credit ourselves for. This list alone encouraged me to think about what I can do personally to make my business a huge success.

The can do attitude of Jay is motivational-a must have book for those who do not have the multi million pound budget to spend on marketing.

Guerrilla Marketing, 15 Aug 2007
A truely excellent book. As a SME owner myself, Jay provides lots of ideas about how to effectuively market your business. We are now implementing many of these ideas...even considering radio advertising because we thought it too expensive. Jay makes you think again! Clearly written with simple lists of things to go and make your marketing happen. The BIBLE!

Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

To many abbreviations and rather dry, 27 Nov 2008
I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

What a good book, 05 Nov 2008
This is a really good book - informative and easy to follow and full of useful tips and know-how.

Welcome to the Magic Circle, 21 Jun 2008
Search Engine Optimisation has acquired a status which might be regarded similar to that of the magic circle:
It's secretive - only those in the circle really know the tricks
There's an element of magic - SEOs do things we don't understand
It's competitive - we all want to get to the top
It's closed - those within the circle do not disclose all the tricks
They even categorise their tricks as good and bad with the terms "white hat" and "black hat"

Well, in this excellent new book David Viney has let us all into the circle, and what we learn is that it's not magic!

However, I should like to follow that statement by immediately saying that it is plainly not easy either. Also, by the very nature of the fierce competition for the top spots, it will always be competitive, and you will always have to work at it.

What this particular magician sets out for us all here is a structure and a method which we might follow to improve our own success.

The author uses the analogy of cookery; there are ingredients, recipes to follow - and I would add, a great deal of time needed to be spent in the kitchen!!

You will be surprised to learn the breadth of things that you will need to do to be in with a competitive chance. The book covers the many factors that contribute to your ultimate success. I was surprised at just how many areas contribute to a site becoming successful, in 240 pages David Viney covers a lot of ground.

The title is so clever; Step 1 in David's plan focuses on finding the "phrases that pay", and sure enough, the title of his book is of course just one such example - nicely wraps-up in a phrase what the book is all about AND is what we are all searching for!

As other reviewers have written here, the book strikes an excellent balance in readability, suitable for reading and use by other professional SEOs and equally works very well for the novice.

The seven step procedure does categorise the areas of focus well, and does give a guide to chronology, but it's not his intention that you should remain in a step until you have done everything you possibly can, more that you need to do a wide number of things, and that over the longer period you will need to track back and forth through the steps and re-visit activities.

The book does a great job of illustrating the size of the market, the strength and importance of Google in that market, and the potential prizes available to the top of page one winners.

"Having your site in the top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town."

You should buy and read this book before building your website, probably even before naming you business. The tips within it on subjects such as targetting a niche, phrases that pay, finding and targeting keywords, domain names, hosting locations, etc. are all key considerations in the choices you should make in the very early days.

But there's no need to worry if you are already well into the life of your business and your website, there is plenty within this book for all to heed and follow.

I would strongly recommend the book to anybody interested in getting their website "to the top on Google", you will learn a great deal, and will be able to take action based upon the guidance within the book.

However, go into this exercise with the awareness that it is a long game. You may read the book in just a few hours, but you will need to work persistently at your website's optimisation continuously to reach the top and stay there .........The prizes are Great. It is fiercely competitive. The web is continuously evolving. Your competitors will read this book too.

This is probably the best book on this subject that you can buy.
Take the first step, buy and read the book.
Then keep it next to your computer, keep dipping into it, follow its recommendations.
Then, be prepared to buy an updated version or follow-up next year, with more and new recommendations for you to implement!

The Mother of all SEO Books, 16 Jun 2008
I want to keep this short and sweet as copywriting is not my strong point. If you are looking for a book that spells out the key issues on SEO in an order that actually makes logical sense - then this is the book for you. Rather than a book full of information (although it is very informative) - its best used a step-by-step tool to any SEO project. I can understand why one of the reviewers read it twice.

I had purchased SEO for Dummies but that was really a 'bits n pieces' kind of book and left me unguided. This book follows a chronological path and makes you stick to it.

I shall be using it on every SEO project from now on.

5/5

Buy IT! BUY IT!, 19 May 2008
I have read this book from cover to cover TWICE!!! Then I bought my collegue a copy for his birthday so he wouldn't keep taking mine!!
This is full of practical knowledge to get you up and going and also a great reference book for the more knowledgable. BUY IT NOW!!! You wont be dissapointed!!

If you need solid data on the power of the digital generation this has it, 26 Nov 2008
Whilst Godin's Tribes tells the tale of the causes that are powered by sharing across the web, gathering an communicating. This book approaches it with more science, more facts, more figures.
It shows the generational change, the expectations powered by the web and web2.0, user created content, the ability to self publish and self organize and how that effects the expectations of the upcoming workforce.
It also though does not suggest it is over for those not growing up digital. This can be used and learned by anyone. Just dont ignore it, dont brush it all off as silly, just chatting on the web etc.
It provides the kind of solid research and breadth that many potential wavering business leaders and managers may need to understand their new role in the changing society.


Disappointing, 30 Jun 2005
Hhmm, I must say, I did not like this one very much. I think it is not a bad book at all, but it does not really deliver what it promises. At least I exspected a whole different information!

The book is really written for people who do not know ANYTHING about the internet and about marketing. It explains the plain basics about how important it is these days to have a webpage and how you can bring your business forward if you have web presence.
It did not teach me anything about Internet marketing that I did not know, and I do not know much to be honest. I just started in this business of marketing, and although it is a lot of fun, I would love to have more information in a book.

This book tries to explain to much, that you really do not want to know, it explains how to get a webpage, how to decide if you need a webdesigner or not and stuff like that.

It does not offer any information about blogs, e-zines, newsletters, adsense, adwords, mailing lists and so on.

I was very disappointed. Perhaps it is a good book for someone who is thinking about going into the web without knowing anything about it, but, I do not really think there are that much of this kind of people around.

Easy to understand. Help me a lot with my course, 13 Dec 2000
I recently discovered this book in the Library at Poole College. I was really impressed with the material it covered. The marketing book that I was using for my coursework was sometimes hard going and I was finding it difficult to understand the "Jargon". However, this book explained the procedure in a more understandable way, ensuring that I was comprehensive with tasks set for me.

I have also been instructed to undertake two subjects for which I have chosen "Designing a simple website (if there is one!!), and Market Research. I found the book to contain all the relevant material to get me started and also gave me some good sites or people to contact to help me further with my study.

The book also contained "Tips" and "Useful Contacts" which enabled me to search through other books to gain information.

Very easy to understand. I hope they have done one for advanced marketing!!

Excellent book-the only one you really need for marketing of a SME business, 11 Aug 2008
I have bought a lot of business and marketing books and whilst some leave a lot to the imagination and motivation, this book hits the nail on the head every single time.

The book goes through everything clearly and explains in simple words why guerrilla marketing is the way forward especially for those businesses on a small budget.

I have only read a small part in this book however keep 'dipping' into Jays wealth of knowledge. I had thought about looking at gift vouchers for my business and how will go ahead with them as Jays book explains why vouchers are important to those in retail.

There is an in-depth list of skills and qualities we have but we often do not credit ourselves for. This list alone encouraged me to think about what I can do personally to make my business a huge success.

The can do attitude of Jay is motivational-a must have book for those who do not have the multi million pound budget to spend on marketing.

Guerrilla Marketing, 15 Aug 2007
A truely excellent book. As a SME owner myself, Jay provides lots of ideas about how to effectuively market your business. We are now implementing many of these ideas...even considering radio advertising because we thought it too expensive. Jay makes you think again! Clearly written with simple lists of things to go and make your marketing happen. The BIBLE!

the book focused on the knowledge you really need to pass the exam, 23 Nov 2008
I passed the exam with a great score thanks to this book and the online course. Highly recommended!

fingers crossed for the exam... , 14 Nov 2008
Background: I bought this book and online study guide to help me achieve Foundation level certification as I'd previously worked in ITIL-based environments and wanted to formalise my learning.

The book is of a large format so everything's got plenty of space to be laid out well. One or two typo's remain but they're only a minor irritant. The content is well presented and has lots of diagrams to usefully put topics into visual structures. However the material is quite dense as is surprisingly slim so lots of re-reading was required (by me with my technical background) and it occurred to me that a spiral-bound, 'workbook' format might have served me a little better - that's just a personal preference.
The online material is straight-forward to access and navigate at a fine granularity and expands on the book's content with additional diagrams and all-important quizzes to test knowledge acquired. The flash-format presentations have a relaxed commentary that's easy to understand, especially if the pause button is used to review the graphics of each section.
I'm still working through it but am quite confident that within a few more days' part-time study I'll be ready for my exam as well as to talk confidently about, and use knowledge of, ITIL in work contexts.
I'll certainly revisit this company's offerings when I want to learn more and perhaps to pass further exams. In fact I'm about to take a look at other products to see which will support my current aims.

All in all, it does more than it's title suggests; top marks.


Quality and a bargain, 15 Oct 2008
The book represents superb value as you also have access to web based training and practice exams. I found it easy to follow and once the terminology is understood the V3 foundation examination is quite easily tackled. Excellent

Good Book + Supporting Materials, 12 Sep 2008
This book and web support material is ideal to help pass you ITL foundation exam. Worth getting...

ITIL v3 Foundation - all you need to know, 11 Sep 2008
This book is great if you work within an IT service management background, and want to pass the foundation exam quickly. I read this book, worked through the sample questions at the end of each chapter, and then did the online course that comes with it. This re-enforced what I had read and had different sample questions and a mock exam.

This is sufficient to gain a pass at foundation level, without paying for an expensive and time consuming course.

The book only concentrates on what you need to know to pass the exam, and to the correct depth of knowledge.

Excellent

Strangest reading experience of my life , 03 Dec 2008
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.

The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.

Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.

Tiresome and Unoriginal, 25 Nov 2008

As a statistician, the book and its premise struck me as an interesting read, but it is clear after a few chapters that the book itself is meandering nowhere. What is worse is that the evidence is always second hand philosophy and the book is peppered with uninteresting self promotion. If your idea of a good read is to re-read Bertrand Russell or to move towards a footnote where the author feels it important to tell you he doesnt wear a tie in meetings then, please, feel free to lap this up and all the sixth form anarchy that it attempts to promote.

As for the statistics, it is amateur stuff. The Black Swan itself is an improbable event on which the author places far too much emphasis. It soon becomes confused and contradictory. Originally boldly stating that bell curve analysis is all Information (or is it Intellectual?) fraud, in later chapters the author then splits outcomes up into factions, some of which are affected by the black swan and some that are not. It then becomes apparent that the author has taken five chapters to split outcomes into normal and non-normal. Ground breaking stuff, that has, errm, been around for centuries. Essentially this book ends up elaborating on the phrase 'Picking pennies in front of a steam roller' which is so familiar to all that, well, there is a phrase for it. This book is an irrelevance to statisticians. I cannot comment on the philosophy side, but, as far as I can see, there isnt a viewpoint that hasnt been borrowed from someone more famous. In short, this book is a huge disappointment.

It should also be noted that this book is unduly aggressive and self opinionated. I assume that this is to add gravitas to the subject. On this point it fails miserably. Instead it makes the author appear narcissistic, unbalanced, and, yes, a bit stupid. Its likely that many people who start this book will lack the desire to finish it. And that, sad to say, isnt a bad thing.

Partial plagiarism of his central thesis?, 02 Nov 2008
Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.

Scintillating , 25 Oct 2008
One of the most intelligent pieces of writing I have come across in my reading career.

It opens up some many new ways of viewing life and its events. Delivered with a delightful touch of arrogance, sudden humour, and iconoclastic precision - the book unearths a paradigm which is so overarchingly pervasive yet consciously ignored by people.

The author's tribute to, and coverage of Benoit Mandelbrot, along with the pooh-poohing of the 'normal' model of reality is a salient highlight, and should not be missed by any serious empiricist.

The book is a black swan.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..., 21 Oct 2008
This book is a black swan because against all the odds it got published. It has one idea swollen unappealingly to almost 400 pages. It is full of stereotypes, rich in "imaginative" anecdotes and insufferably pompous. If you want to read about chance and probability then try Ian Stewart; for Chance and Necessity read Jacques Monod (1972).

To many abbreviations and rather dry, 27 Nov 2008
I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

What a good book, 05 Nov 2008
This is a really good book - informative and easy to follow and full of useful tips and know-how.

Welcome to the Magic Circle, 21 Jun 2008
Search Engine Optimisation has acquired a status which might be regarded similar to that of the magic circle:
It's secretive - only those in the circle really know the tricks
There's an element of magic - SEOs do things we don't understand
It's competitive - we all want to get to the top
It's closed - those within the circle do not disclose all the tricks
They even categorise their tricks as good and bad with the terms "white hat" and "black hat"

Well, in this excellent new book David Viney has let us all into the circle, and what we learn is that it's not magic!

However, I should like to follow that statement by immediately saying that it is plainly not easy either. Also, by the very nature of the fierce competition for the top spots, it will always be competitive, and you will always have to work at it.

What this particular magician sets out for us all here is a structure and a method which we might follow to improve our own success.

The author uses the analogy of cookery; there are ingredients, recipes to follow - and I would add, a great deal of time needed to be spent in the kitchen!!

You will be surprised to learn the breadth of things that you will need to do to be in with a competitive chance. The book covers the many factors that contribute to your ultimate success. I was surprised at just how many areas contribute to a site becoming successful, in 240 pages David Viney covers a lot of ground.

The title is so clever; Step 1 in David's plan focuses on finding the "phrases that pay", and sure enough, the title of his book is of course just one such example - nicely wraps-up in a phrase what the book is all about AND is what we are all searching for!

As other reviewers h