True.

For the example I used a sitemap but we usually crawl a site first. Problem is then, how do you quickly show what those 10K+ URL's map to? Hence the Excel trick :)

The news is good. Is it better than what I see in my "People you follow" view in Google Reader? No. Better than a slew of links I see on Twitter? Sometimes.

In other words, it's just another editorial site. When I see a story I really like, I miss it that I can't vote for it.

And frankly, without that community thing of voting up or down, I don't really see myself working for the site. Why would I submit articles to a commercial, editorial site?

So, yes, good work -- but no, I wasn't waiting for this; I wasn't experiencing any lack of a site that does what you want to do.

Matt, thanks for the kind words: I won't kill you now :)

Yup. On Cre8asite Forums we have a couple of people who post but every moment there are ten times more lurkers. And yes, web sites have 100 visitors and only 3 buy a candy. So?

Yes, Sphinn is dead. It's dead the way Digg would be dead without voting. Dead the way YouTube would be dead without video upload.

Can it change? Sure. The same way Digg could become a great site about Excel tweaks. It can -- but it's just something completely different.

Will there be awesome content you guys are going to curate? Of course! But if that's what the web was waiting for, another roundup site -- dunno.

But hey, despite fervently disagreeing with y'all, I'll stay in touch and see where this is going. No harm done.

Warner, Emory, thanks for pat on the back!

Jill ... that's semantics. Fact is: the editor team decides what will be exceptional front page material vs. the community decides that.

This is almost funny.

Danny: "For voting to really work, you need a large number of people consisently voting"

Sphinn's solutions: a small number of editors will vote...

Danny: "You also need a relatively small number of pathfinder leaders consistently submitting good stuff for votes"

But as we already have a small number of people submitting a small number of stories -- as per the indications of inactivity in this thread -- you already have what you want.

Just to be clear: I love your idea of an SEO editorial magazine -- but that has nothing to do with Sphinn. It's like Starbucks stopping coffee sales and making hamburgers instead; not a bad idea in itself but wholy inappropriate.

Wish I could vote your comment up twice, Kristi. Which begs the question: how much longer will we be able to do *that*...

Danny, I want to keep the voting on a voting site because it is a voting site. It's that simple.

Level of activity, participation? Like you point out, people vote all the time on Twitter and Facebook. Aggregrate those then instead of relying on your own voting mechanism.

But solving it by removing voting yet going on with Sphinn is ... senseless. Useless. You already have SearchCap http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-the-day-in-search-august-31-2010-49679

So to recap: Sphinn was special because it is "our" Digg ... if you remove that, why duplicate what you already do with SearchCap?

Well, to be a pain in the butt jerk, I have more desphinn reasons. It's not exceptional content for example. Any piece suggesting to solve a problem by ditching the problem? Not exceptional. "You have a problem building links? Then don't!"

Second, look at who's voting this up. Weren't we looking at voting rings: now the editorial team is patting each other on the back so I guess *we* the community have to do the vote pattern watching ... now we still can :)

What makes the whole thing look like a clammer-fall-over-ourselves-hurry-do-something decision is that just the other week you came out telling us how it was going to be. We had to behave, submit content that is marginal, over our head or otherwise exceptional -- and only vote if we don't see people voting we generally agree with.

Fine.

Then you pull the rug out from under us.

What have you got scheduled for next week Wednesday? The announcement that due to too many crap submissions Sphinn says goodbye to submissions themselves and that going forward the editors will pick the stories?

I like the way the flowchart captures the essential process. I mindmap when I read stuff like this but a flowchart works nice too.

Good call. Had shared it on Google Reader already but not here (imagine submitted with a press of a key!)

I'm not sure the two main reasons mentioned, nationalism and MP3 search, were *the* deciding factors.

There's definitely some hesitance towards a foreign company like Google. In North America we would see the same thing if a, say, Middle Eastern search engine would appear here. But patriotism or nationalism doesn't make or break a search engine "war"

What comes into play is that just like "we" choose for Google because it simply had better results (as judged by us....) people in China pick Baidu because *it* has better results *according to them*

Anecdotally, the inclusion of paid placement in the search results would be something that builds trust for the Baidu user whereas "we" find it suspect.

They've done all the research, now you just have to read it ... and act on it. Guess which part is the hardest?

I read "limit the number of links" as limiting what links where. The very next sentence, same paragraph and no linebreak, reads ""You want to link only to other content that is relevant and good for the end user and to other sections or posts within the same silo."

Sphunn: together with the original and repurposed posts on Bruce Clay's, this series is one of the better hands-on silo explantions/tutorials. ..and I happen to like siloing :)

Goes beyond the "you could do..." suggestions and shows actual "here's how you do it"

Just today I read someone being all excited about finding this feature in WordPress I was aware of since version whatever. Although the "backup & secure" angle might feel old (head-nod to the exceptional content discussion) I believe knowledge has to be refreshed for the newcomers.

So, besides the fact that this is on Search Engine People -- I really find this a good post.

Quite brilliant :)

No fluff. Love it.

Wordpress is such a beast with URL's at times.

ANyway -- writing your own slug is actually better. Now how does that? ... Anyone...? Raise your hand... Hey, where is everybody!? :)

You can analyze how Stephen King writes books and maybe even get an AI to generate some stories like them but it doesn't necessarily get you somewhere.

True, we can stand on the shoulders of giants but in the end it's about the magic, it's about falling through the pages into a world of its own. A world made of words and ideas, of wonder and thought.

It has to *click*.

Passion is not enough: you need to work at it -- hard. Do what you think needs doing; be the Galileo of bloggers, the Einstein of writers.

Forget that Shakespeare's top 1% most frequently used words constitute 66.7% of all the words used in his plays (Source). Instead, write. Blog. Write as if these days are the only ones you have and that once over, the chance to write is gone.

...

Good post though.

True. Clear. Well said.

You can use a scientific approach to SEO but SEO itself is not nor will be a science.

Observing how a mechanical watch works, what makes it tick, can be done hopscotch or scientifically -- but it will never be a science, I hope :)

Nice post; love the indexation links even more :) Actionable stuff here. Thanks!

Nice post but would be more interesting when mapped over time instead of pulling the links at the first sign of ranking increase.

Now we have 1 experiment of 8 days, 2 of 4 days. Obviously had all been ran at 4 days the 1st experiment would look a bit different. So, what if all 3 had ran 8 days?

Pulling the links *as soon as the rankings change* is some sort of confirmation bias. It says; "this is what happens with paid links"

@Jill Good point. That itself is an interesting experiment; follow 3 to 5 common routes/channels for paid links to establish what Google sees or not (or heeds or not)