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NickWilsdon
I don't agree that an admin or moderator desphinn is more powerful than an ordinary one. The authority the mods carry here is primarily based on their own names within the industry. TBH aside from Rob, Michelle, Tamar, Brent and Matt - I don't know who else is a mod at the moment. I think I checked the list once when the site started and haven't bothered since.
New users definitely wouldn't know who was a mod here - they don't have markings on their profiles - so I can't see that affecting their decision to sphinn a story anymore than a normal desphinn.
Woo-hoo! I've got a life-time auto-sphinn from Harith. I can feel him slowly turning to the dark side :D
@Skitzzo
That note has been up for about 10 hrs now - post seems to be staying. Besides that window of opportunity pretty much went after the US came into work.
Come on Harith - everything Matt tweets is not news :)
Besides, I think you should hold off on this one until we see what Rand and co. are doing about that post. If they choose to take it down we might be able to avoid another industry fight - in which case it would be better not to have a Sphinn post on the subject - no?
Morning Harith :)
Yep my feelings were the same as HD. More posts/coverage just seems to escalate the issues for all concerned and the damage it is doing. However that window of opportunity seems to be slipping away now, Rand has still not taken down the post after several hours of 'internal consideration'.
I notice Lyndon has also blogged the post too. http://sphinn.com/story/61089
Ah well, so much for keeping the peace. Calacanis - any chance of releasing a statement and uniting the community again?
Yep lost 50 followers here, can see the same has happened to lots of people. I've been loosing connections though randomly for months, I only realise when I see someone message@ someone I know I was following and can't see the other half of the conversation.
Twitter really is some flakey software :)
Igor thinks that they have restored an old database that is 3 weeks old. That doesn't fit with me but does with many others apparently.
http://twitter.com/igorthetroll/statuses/866794411
Story: Google Ranking Factors
I've seen this list before. Web Archive shows it going back to 2004.. Looks useful but it's a pity the author has decided to remove the updated line from the site. As it stands, I can't see a reason to submit this as "news" - especially as it seems identical to the version present in June 2007.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070609232219/http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm
@Harith
Err, that twitter comment wasn't meant to be taken seriously. I'll try and remember to put a smilie after stuff like that in the future ;)
As Dave says, this has been out a while. I wrote about it over a month ago. Personally I don't see this as spamming twitter, it's not in anyone's face or ruining their use of the service. You could argue that it spams Google or the other search engines, as it may give some linkjuice to a few sites but you can't even use anchor text for the link. If people used it responsibly they would just get a small link to their biography sites.
It's also worth noting that unless your Twitter page has some inbound links to it, the page hardly ranks anyway. At worse here we may have seen the start of some Twitter paid-links bartering from the better ranking twitters - I don't think you would get much from starting multiple new accounts (folders not subdomains). Correct me if I'm wrong though.
@Harith
>There is no need to repeat mentioning the same URL under "Bio" too ;-)
I quite agree. That's why I put 5 completely different ones in there...
@Harith
Yep I'd expect that too. I've had some referrals from my links so I'll still be keeping in there for the traffic. I still wouldn't call them spam, they are more similar to forum signature links. It's not a "linking scheme".
However I can quite easily see that paragraph you quote changing one day into "Don't participate in anything designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank". :)
True you have to learn how to fire clients who are too demanding on your time. It's that old 80/20 rule, 20% of your clients will bring in 80% of your income. Learn to target and look after these guys and your business will grow.
If you're really devious, it's also a good idea to refer your most demanding and troublesome clients onto your competitors. That keeps their wheels spinning while you move ahead. They will even thank you for it
@massa
Hope you get it sorted out Bob, your posts are always worth a read
Story: I **** Jack Daniels Dot Com
I guess it's fair of Jack Daniels to want to protect their trademark but v. sad they can't promise Dave a permanent redirect. I can't see how that would damage them, after he's handed the domain over. He's built up a huge number of natural links to the site, with all the free cheat sheets he's released over the years.
Well the author finally comes round in the last paragraph and state why META description can be useful. It's your sales pitch to get the user to click through to your site and not one of the other 9 on the page. That alone makes it valuable.
It's also worth noting that Yahoo! uses the META keywords tag, so you can slip mis-spellings in here and avoid having to put them onto the page copy or title (which makes you/your company look unprofessional).
The reason I still rate them though is that they send a unique signal about the page to Google. When you're trying to avoid the supplementary index you need all the unique signals you can get. Putting in a universal META description would not help or leaving the tag out entirely, as Google may end up grabbing the same first few lines for all your pages.
I do agree about the time factor, this isn't an area which should be focused on and it's sad that for some companies this is still their main SEO strategy. This should be a quick task. For example on large sites it's well worth working with a programmer to create a dynamic template for the tag, so you automatically use unique content from each page.
@wheel
Yep no doubt Drupal is more heavy duty and better coded but I've been worried about the security on that too. When Earl was setting up Threadwatcher.org he went with Drupal, as NickW had done with the origional TW. One of the guys hacked into the default install within minutes so he changed to WP.
I'm not saying that Drupal is less secure than WordPress but it does seem you have to learn how to secure the platform. With WP we already have a package of security mods and proceedures in the office so it feels the safer option at the moment still. I'd be really interested in your and Darkmatter's experiences though.
Story: Why I Don’t Like Sphinn
Well it was a big fluffy. I voted it up because I found Patrick's writing very funny. As long as the balance is in the favour of serious/quality articles, I can put up with the occassional human interest story slipping through.
In the last week or so quality has gone up here though. People seem to be using the Desphinn button more which is cool. @boorishamerican, you "had a similar reaction when I saw this post was going hot". If you felt that strongly then why didn't you desphinn it?
Another quality article from Avinash. He's looking at ways you can track offline conversions, such as recording the no. of hits on your embedded copy of Google Maps (when users locate their nearest store). Good stuff.
Yep, it's getting harsh out there. Loads of identity squatting on Plurk when that launched. Scobleizer, SEOMoz and Sugarrae all got their names taken. Rae's case is open and shut deliberate. Do people really think this will get them traffic?
AFAIK Robert's the only one who has managed to get Plurk management to hand his back to him. I had a quick read through the TOS at Plurk and they do seem to cover identity theft
13. You agree that we may reclaim usernames on the Service on behalf of businesses or individuals who hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.
Not many of us have trademarked our usernames though, however distinctive they maybe. I don't think there is a case without this step but I'd be interested to hear more from someone in the know. How would the situation change if your username was your real name - is that legal claim?
Yep as Danny quoted Adobe:
"RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can be confident it can now be found by users around the globe."
That's just made our lives that little bit harder. Most PDFs can be "searched" and "found", doesn't mean you should make a website in that format.
I think the reason so many blackhatters change is the clients. I don't think top companies are looking for BH SEOs to handle their accounts. They don't have the brand building experience, churn and burn philisophy isn't sensible when it comes to premium or trademark domains. They are definitely technically able but there is a different focus on this work.
Generally though BHs can probably make more money than novice WHs, affiliate sites are more profitable than many of the WH jobs I started out with (local estate agents etc). When you get to the top of your game though, it makes sense to put the white/grey hat on and take the juicy corporate gigs. Probably explains why some people are sensitive about the label.
"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."
Most likely explanation is that other pro-Obama supporters reported this blog as spam and the wheels got put in motion. The owner responded to the email and the site was reactivated (it's online again now). Where's the story?
Story: Happy Birthday Lisa Barone!
I really didn't want to Sphinn this but Patrick cracks me up.
Happy Birthday Lisa :)
Story: Should Sphinn Admin And Moderators Be Able To Desphinn?