Calendar
Network
Feeds
KenJones
I know what you mean James, I guess I'd just prefer to see the posts that I highlight in my link-fests get the attention in sphinn directly, they're the things that are worth reading, all I'm doing is pointing out stuff that I think deserves to be seen and rambling a little bit in between link ;-)
I appreciate the sphinn James, but I'm not sure my weekly link-fest is really the sort of thing that'll go far around here. I mean, it doesn't even mention the Google Cookbook.
That said, I'm a big fan of myself, so of course I'll give it a sphinn ;-) I just don't really expect anybody else to.
Has anyone else noticed that the URL and page title both say "sandbow" instead of "sandbox?"
Epic kindergarten spelling mistake fail!
@Halfdeck - "Actually I've seen a Googler or two point to overloaded META keywords as a negative quality signal."
That's exactly the point I wanted to get across. Going over the top with your META Keywords can "sink" you with Google, but the tag has been so devalued as a result of all the spammy abuses in the past that even a properly written keywords tag isn't going to help you "float" much higher.
That said, perhaps I could have made that point clearer in the original post.
"It's questionable Google uses TrustRank at all, though I believe "trust" is still important."
I think we can both agree that (whether or not "TrustRank TM" exists within Google as a documented part of the overall ranking algorithm in the same way as PageRank does) Google does make use of certain signals regarding a site's "trustworthiness."
Ann Smarty did a great post today about the value of domain age/website age (sphinn link here http://sphinn.com/story/59098 ) which shows that the age of a website (and the age of its associated link profile) can be a stronger influencer that the actual domain age. IMO these kind of signals almost certainly form a subset of the signals used to calculate PageRank.
It's a shame I didn't see her post until after I published mine or I'd have included a link to it.
I'm not sure I follow your logic as far as this having to do with the webmaster and his/her record. Webmasters may come and go from a site and although a previous webmaster's indiscretions may have caused the negative effects to a site's rankings, it is still the site that suffers such penalties and it's up to the new webmaster to clean up any issues and file for reinclusion.
Story: Internet Plagiarism
It's tempting to sphinn this just for the sheer cheekiness of the post, but no, all the sphinn juice deserves to go to the one who actually had an original thought.
I especially like Danny's postscript addition about his phone call to the judges office.
"That's T-E-C-H-M-E-M-E-DOT-COM, I spelled out." LOL
Sounds like a good idea, if only to stop Jason Gambert getting hold of .seo
This was how explained it to my girlfriend and she said it made much more sense than my usual ramblings about Google and PageRank and anchor text etc.
Glad everyone else seems to like it and I hope you find it as useful as I have.
@vangogh - Thanks Steven, I've already thought of one addition for the analogy. Google could decide you've broken their guidelines and Matt Cutts puts his sunglasses on so that your site doesn't seem to shine as brightly ;-)
@bbcarter - "if a website gets built in a forest and no one links to it, does it make a sound? No, silly, of course not!" I like it. Very Zen.
But, what's the sound of 1 website clapping?
Well done to both of you. Now how about a race to see which of you can gain the most followers on Plurk? Jeff, it could be your chance to win one back.
Thank god this wasn't a list of all the people @scobleizer follows on twitter ;-) That's take forever to get through.
Hang on, so this takes you to a digg submission that he put in of his own sphinn submission that hardly anyone else has actually sphunn? I feel dizzy.
Um, is this hoaxbait? Coz Rand's command of the English language is usually a lot better than that. Wondering if the seoco guys are going for some kind of SEO equivalent of the Fake Steve Jobs blog.
Sphunn anyway, coz it's still pretty funny.
@Jeremy, alternatively it could just be the exact same kind of grey PR bar that appears for every page on the internet that has been published since the last time Google released an update of Toolbar PR displays. You can't take that to mean anything.
@Jane, so this is for real after all. I thought it was another joke piece of linkbait (apologies to seoco in that case - although I still think it'd be hilarious if someone did create a Fake Rand Fishkin blog a la Fake Steve Jobs, or maybe a Fake Matt Cutts would be even funnier)
You can find me at http://www.plurk.com/user/TheKenJones because once again one of the many, many other people called Ken Jones got there first and I had to prefix my name with a "The" (just in case you thin I'm being egotistical or anything ;-) )
Just realised I forgot to add FUD to this list. Wikipedia says it can mean either Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt or Female Urination Device (?!) so I'm going to assume that SEOs mean the former when they use it.
;-)
I've sphunn this because I've found the effects of this story to be very amusing, from the point of view of seeing how far it's spread throughout the media and the obvious fact that it highlights just how poorly researched even the biggest news organizations in the world can be. In terms of pure linkbait, gaining inbound links from a massive number of authoritative sites, it's clearly been a raging success.
But...
I also find myself agreeing with Jill's concerns about the ethics of using an outright lie as a way of trying to promote a site, especially one like money.co.uk, where consumers will want to be able to trust the advice and information that they find there.
I'm not really sure that the "I never said it was true" defense holds up. And as for citing WMD as an example of ficticious news, if this story ends up being half as damaging to money.co.uk's credibility as WMD was to the government's then there'll be a hell of a lot of rep management fallout to deal with.
Dammit, this fence really isn't a comfortable place to sit. ;-)
Hee hee. arse commerce ;-)
Sphunn purely for the sake of that gag lightening the mood around here after all the heavy debating going on over in the thread about Lyndon's hoaxbait.
Interesting theory and a well presented case, but I have a feeling that the example given regarding the Chinese earthquake stories will have been ranked so highly in large part as a result of the "Query Deserves Freshness" aspect of the algo kicking in due to the sudden upswing in searches for that phrase rather than simply because of the number of links they attracted.
How about a warning banner on the submit page that states that if you submit articles that get removed as spam we'll tell Danny you drank all his Diet Coke and send him to your house with a baseball bat? Would that be enough of a deterrent?
Maybe the guy's just invented a new kind of linkbait. There must be a heck of a lot of people linking to him at the moment with anchor text that includes the words SEO and Trademark. Although I suspect there may be more than a few with anchor text that is far less complementary or relevant as well.
Story: Link-Fest for Monday July 21st 2008