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- Sphinn It!
Went Hot: May 23, 2008 - 9:59 am
Posted By: theGypsy 43 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Link Building
SEL - Disclosure is a key point made by Matt. Now, if the article says the sources are not validated or the article is speculation - would that be sufficient? Would Google soon require us to slap on a nosource (aka nofollow) tag in the META tags so a GoogleBot can decipher the article's validity?
6 Comments
Comments
This is the kind of garbage that makes SEOs look like modern day snake oil salesmen.
Sure it's creative, and I bet it was fun, but that is bottomfeeder behavior. It's pathetic and it's definitely not genuine.
Imagine if this happened offline. Some kid calls a TV station and says, "I'm 13 and my dad let me get two hookers for my birthday." Sure, the TV would be licking their chops, but they would probably determine the story to be complete fabrication. In other words, it's made up -- it's a lie.
Lying is the type of manipulation that often kills companies. If it's intent is malicious like artifically inflating your website's visibility, it should be punished.
If I were a large public company and posted false information about my sales data, or some earth-shattering technology that will position my company as the best in my industry, that info would def. inflate stock prices. Again, if it's published it must be fact.
It's manipulation and someone always gets burned. We should all be accountable for what we post. If it's opinion, make sure it's clear that it is opinion. If it's fiction or satire, thanks for sharing your creativity, but make sure people understand that it is not real.
This is just another example of Google exerting its control over web content. “You want us to index you, play by our rules or get your traffic from MSN and Yahoo” .
The whole point of google is to provide the most relevant/trusted website up at the top of the list. A link acts as a recommendation to content. But if the content is false then the link is invalid.
I don't think there's an algorithmic solution to this, it can only be done through human review, but then you have the problem of what the reviewers consider fake :/
I'm glad! Now they will go after Calacanis for his fakes: http://sphinn.com/story.php?id=48239
What happens to sites like The Onion whose entire model is built around fake stories?
@clickfire
they continue to be successful because there is nothing deceptive or ambiguous about them.