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Went Hot: January 14, 2008 - 3:07 pm
Posted By: OliverTaco 266 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Social Media
Not a wimpy political "I am sorry it could have been interpreted as blah blah" but a regular: "I screwed up and I am sorry about it."
Good article. Worth a read.
18 Comments
Comments
Yeah good stuff, Danny shows us how it needs to be done!
Very classy - thank you for this excellent example of how to take responsibility vs. blaming others. :)
You know, I went ahead and Dugg this. I know that on Digg SEO is as popular as passing gas in Church (sitting in your own pew) but this is really the adult side of the story.
http://digg.com/software/He_Blew_Up_Wired_s_Wiki
-OT
The original article was a valid article of interest to this community. I've no problem with it being published at all.
Still the folks at wired got excited and DS did the upstanding thing and apologized. Any further and Wired starts looking poorly here.
Danny, thanks for setting an example of responsibility in journalism (and humility). More journalists need to see examples like this.
Back in the old days (last year) you could've incited an SEO riot (contest) to see who could rank highest for 'Danny Sullivan' in 30 days.
Where has all the fun gone?
I think it was a wee bit below SEL to publish that possibly irresponsible, possibly of interest - leave those sort of sensationalist articles for us bottom feeders, Danny. :)
A good response.
I'm not sure I see the need to apologize here. Authority sites that leave big gaping holes for interested parties to post links (.edu, anyone?) (a) prove again that Google's algorithm is flawed & under threat; (b) prove that "nofollow" won't be a solution unless very widely (nearly 100%) adopted by authority sites that don't have direct control over posts; (c) deserve whatever attention is drawn to them.
It seems like years since cheesy "guestbook spam" actually worked. What kind of advance is it that only marginally more sophisticated versions of "guestbook spam" actually have a place in SEO?
If anything, Danny, you have drawn further attention to the increasingly trivial nature of what SEO has become under the current version of the PageRank link economy, and the damage that "gaping holes" can do in terms of the level playing field for relevancy.
Slightly off topic - but remember the "classic" articles that got published in publications like Webmonkey, purporting to simplify the whole process of SEO? http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/99/31/index1a.html
The 2001 version of that article - nearly imperceptibly - gets a little harder core. Proof as always that SEO advice is so often given with forked tongue. Don't spam... and by the way, here's a trick for my friends. (Is this what Danny's apologizing for?)
Anyway, organically speaking, compared with those days, it looks like Google is at sea, mainly because so many more people try to spam them now. The furious efforts to stop manipulative link schemes only hurt quality sites that are now much more often subject to false positive downgrades & penalties.
In the meantime, many of the most cynical pursuers of links do very well, at least until they "blow up." On many long tail and local queries, I no longer have any sense of what is, should, or will qualify as relevant. High-end scraped crap competes with low-end scraped crap. Blogs are treated with suspicion, even though they're content. "Definitive" pieces rarely rank anymore, taking a backseat for now to Wikipedia.
That's not saying Yahoo or MSN results are any better. They're just me-too "less good" versions of Google.
Is all this a sign that the model is broken and a new generation of search really is needed?
Google themselves seem to be aware of this, as they experiment with a variety of models in local search, UGC, and more. But they and their largely naive user base have a fair bit invested in the Ten Blue Links model. It'll be interesting to watch what happens.
I agree Andrew - Danny did nothing wrong here. I'm actually dissapointed to see a public apology.
I gave an entire presentation at Pubcon identifying open link sources and no one there or afterwards was upset. I'm of the opinion that the only reason there was any controversy is because a few opportunistic folks used this to drag SEL through the muck purely for their own benefit. Negative linkbaiting at its worst, and tragic to see how much attention one can still garner by taking potshots at people who've earned respect for actions that don't warrant it.
I guess that is why link building secrets should stay secrets. Just kidding, but I agree if you leave your website open to link spamming or for the potential there of, why aplogize?
I think the headline was the problem. "Get your free links" reads like a call to spammers and an insult to the people at Wired who were trying to do something good (a HowTo wiki - a great idea).
I listened to Rand's Pubcon talk and it highlighted "sources of links" which is perfectly valid, especially for a conference on search marketing. He also asked everyone to refrain from blogging the list in public, and purposefully didn't distribute the list in electronic form (comare that to the "transparency" SEOMoz is famous for). All appropriate (and probaby necessary) steps to protect the sources against aggressive abuse. Those steps also softened if not quelled any criticism of Rand for having presented it.
Apparently Rand knows better than just throw it out there as a list of "places to get free links".
Kudos to Danny for caring so much and spending so much time thinking through his responses, and finding a way to fix the problems.
Just found this in a Rand Fishkin interview at http://sphinn.com/story/22826... seems to fit the bill:
Danny, never let anything I say make ya feel shameful. Unless of course it's while I'm wearing my Mistress SEO outfit, blue wig and telling you to tell me how very, very bad you've been - LOL!
The point of the above comment: Let's all lighten up on each other and get back to work. We're human and have all said/done stuff online that in retrospect we thought we should not have. For me, its the first part of this comment ;) .
I for one am happy you put edits in the original article and am taking your apology(ies) as a lesson to myself in how to gratiously give an apology.
This apology sounds more like a personal thing (uh oh I've upset some of my friends) than a professional one. In my opinion, no apology was necessary. Perhpas an explanation and a justification, but not an apology.
If SEL didnt sound the trumpets, some other site would have. And Ultimately, it was WIRED, in their infinite technical wisdome, made such a massive error.
Its another case of, "We know everyting already," so why bother learning anything more.
...and this comes from a long-time wired fan
@ Rand - I think that being courteous and considerate of others online should be a serious consideration for SEOs and marketers alike.
Wired's definition of SEO:
"Search engine optimization services are the Wile E. Coyotes of the Internet economy: doomed to stalk prey that repeatedly slips away just as it’s captured. SEO consulting — fine-tuning client pages to land them atop search engine results — has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar industry. But even those that attain the ultimate prize of a number one ranking can’t celebrate for long. Search engines are always tweaking their algorithms to prevent sites from gaming the system to artificially boost their results. Sure, it makes for a frustrating chase. But it also means repeat business."
This won't change until we respect our online neighbors rather than trying to exploit them!
I'm surprised (unless I missed it), that no one in this comment thread has said "Hey Danny, great piece of linkbait; that apology article you wrote!". One thing about this search community is that it's chock full of cynics that go way overboard in "holding people to task", as if they are some sort of angel themsleves. Let he who is innocent cast the first stone!
I've always said - never trust anyone that has a hard time trusting people. I don't know Danny personally, but he sure as hell seems pretty trustworthy to me. I mean, how much does a person need to give in order to be given the benefit of the doubt. While the headline may have been a bit misguided, I have no qualms with the subject matter or the intent.
In the end, Danny did Wired a favor. Rather than having a long, drawn out waste of time having to moderate the inevitable ever-increasing volume of spammy content, they have now instituted no follow and can minimize the hassle altogether. Does anyone really think that this would not have occurred regardless?
Another quick question. Would anyone have called Danny to task if he sent out an email to a few hundred of his closest SEO confidantes (maybe yourself included), whispering "Psst, don't tell anyone, but Wired has an open Wiki that follows. Go get yourself some link love."?
"I'm surprised (unless I missed it), that no one in this comment thread has said "Hey Danny, great piece of linkbait; that apology article you wrote!". "
Why not? Because this article isn't link bait. Danny is smart enough to know when he's made a mistake and is man enough to admit it. He could have pointed his finger at Wired or justified what he did but instead he admitted he was wrong, took full responsibility (instead of sharing blame with Barry), and went out of his way to help Wired deal with its problem. That takes character.
@Halfdeck - I got that. I was being sarcastic. It seems that all too often, people are looking for someone to throw under the bus by accusing them of something they may have done with no intent to harm, which is what I believe is the case here.
BTW - thank for not calling me a spammy c*ock su*ker! ;)