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Skitzzo
Gonna be nice to see where the clicks come from. Great find Donna, and nice work Pierre!
Come on! It's not like Guy K's going to suffer because of this post.
First of all, Google is impotent in dealing with issues like these. They pick on the people they know won't be heard if they pitch a fit (the bloggers that use PayPerPost etc) and they let anything A-listers do slip by.
Besides, all the people upset that Guy was used as an example, did you also express your outrage when Google prompted thousands of webmasters to become narks on the issue of paid links?
As Graywolf said, the point that needs to be discussed here is that Google attacks and penalizes some types of paid links, while rewarding others. And I, for one think that's an issue that deserves to be addressed by Google's representatives and more of the big name bloggers in this industry.
Lol love the desphinn for this! Um I can't figure out your captcha (which has nothing to do with the quality of the post) so I'm going to vote you down.... quality.
Story: TinyURL SEO
This post can be summed up in one sentence that many SEOs already knew...
TinyURLs 301 redirect.
Maybe I'm just cranky today or something but why is that Sphinn material?
Matt, I have ranked a Knol page in the top 20 for a fairly competitive term with a single link to it. Are you claiming that I could do the same thing with a brand new site or a page on one of my own existing sites?
No offense, but even if you guys didn't INTEND Knol to get a rankings advantage is not the same as what happens in practice. I realize you're all geniuses over there but you've screwed stuff up before.
Also, I notice that you say "unfair" advantage. Does that imply that some advantage is fair?
@SpostareDuro if the mods/admins were easily identified that MIGHT be the case for some newcomers. However, as is pointed out above, most people here don't know who they are and even fewer newcomers will have an idea of who a mod or admin is. So I don't think that's really a concern.
To take it even further, if newcomers are going to be swayed by the actions of others, maybe we should take away the desphin option completely? And while we're at it, let's not allow people to sphinn things either because newbies might decide to follow the pack and promote something that's not worthwhile.
What the hell has gotten into SEOs lately?
And, SEOmoz what does "but we are considering what to do internally" mean when it's been up there for hours on end? Either stand behind publishing the piece and accept the consequences or pull the post. It's that simple. You look like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too by passing off responsibility but the buck stops at the owner of the site.
Wow... an opinionated guy like me has a lot to work with here.
First of all, @evilgreenmonkey, I do follow Matt Cutts and actually missed that tweet because of Twitter's amazing reliability. In any case, I think it most definitely warrants a discussion.
@Harith, your "Sphinn Love" comments make me want to desphinn your submission no matter what. I didn't in this case but seriously you don't come off well. You can't dictate how people use this site and although I think it's somewhat tongue in cheeck, you're essentially begging for sphinns and that's just sad.
Finally, @NickWilsdon it's been 7 hours since your comment about waiting and Rand & co haven't done anything. I'm not sure what time exactly Rand posted his disclaimer that they were considering what to do with the post but it's been at least a couple of hours which should be more than enough time to figure out what to do with it.
@Harith, I understand it was humor but you've made the same type of "joke" several times and like I said it comes across as one of those "I'm joking but I really mean it" type "jokes".
Again, I didn't desphinn this one but figured I'd let you know how it reads (at least to me).
@randfish, do you not think it warrants a post explaining what happened and maybe what you just posted here? The fact that it was pulled back into Youmoz doesn't matter a whole lot now that everyone has read it.
I understand that you weren't the person that wrote it or published it on the main blog but it's your blog on your site. It's sort of a "the buck stops here" issue and the fact that you allowed the post to stay on the main blog for 12 hours or so, even though you commented that you were troubled by the content, IMO makes a public address (if not an appology to those involved) neccesary.
I'm sorry but what are you talking about here?
"Digg is highly valued as a blog quality indicator when Diggs rise above the 50 to 100 plus mark."and
"Google cannot continue to use Digg as a quality indicator"The only quality indicator that Google uses Digg for is a link, just like every other link on the web. Sure links from Digg (especially from the home page) are more powerful than some others, but if Google really had a problem with that, they'd simply devalue outbound links on Digg, not buy them.
@Chris, you're not even addressing my point! The post states that "Digg is highly valued as a blog quality indicator."
The value Digg passes is through a link. Just like every other site on the web. It's not given some sort of magical "ooh this site has been on digg it must rank #1" type status.
And again, if Google had an issue with the way Digg is affecting the rankings they'd simply devalue the links Digg provides. There's no need to buy the site to do that.
The rest of your rant makes it quite clear to me that I need not waste any more of my time debating any point with you because that would probably just mean I'm a part of the vast conspiracy theory against you.
@Chris, first of all, I think msaleem would be the first to tell you that he doesn't consider himself an SEO. And you do know that while he has some affiliation with pronet, it's not like he owns the joint. Neil Patel is the head honcho there.
Secondly, you keep ranting about the "Digg mafia" ... if you would put as much effort into creating or finding content that Digg users would like as you do complaining that users who spend a TON of time on the site are rewarded, you'd probably be part of this so called "mafia" yourself.
Since when did social media = SEO? If you read the posts (even on places like "Search Engine Land") they are about social media, not SEO.
And by "some affiliation" i meant I don't know whether he's a full time employee or just a contractor or what.
Did you seriously just compare Digg to the Nazis?
Here's the bottom line. A lot of people have this hatered for the top Digg users but they don't seem to realize the amount of time and effort that is put into contributing to the site at that level. The way you become a top digger is by submitting content that digg users like on a very regular basis.
However, many SEOs see Digg as nothing but a chance getting a few links and try to bend Digg around their content rather than creating content Digg users would naturally like. The same holds true for many other social media sites.
So any site that's for sale shouldn't be listed in the SERPs?
I understand that you think your friend's site offers better content, but it's not like the site that's ranked doesn't offer any content. In fact, it has quite a bit of content and what I would see as usefull tools. Now maybe those tools are standard on other sites but I think your bias is making a bit bigger deal out of this than it really is.
Why not just have your friend buy the site?
Um didn't Donna already write this post? The post doesn't seem to be adding much.
Rusty, I didn't mean that you shouldn't have written the post or that you did anything wrong. I simply mean I don't see why we'd need to have this sphunn when the submission of Donna's piece is sitting on the front page.
Why split up the conversation into multiple places ya know?
@Skitzzo - Can you clarify? I understand that dupe Sphinn's on the same topic are not encouraged but this is a case of two different stories on a similar topic written by two different people and submitted by two different people.
Barry's was in error because DD's went hot or because its a similar topic?
@cre8, I don't think Barry was at all in error. I just thought it didn't need to be sphunn. If Graywolf wrote a rant about Google and I then covered it on Gevil adding my perspective but essentially hitting on the same points, I wouldn't think mine would be valuable to sphinn if his had already gone hot and most people had been exposed to it.
The fact that this happens a lot on sphinn doesn't neccesarily mean that it should or that it's a good thing.
Again, I'm not saying Barry did anything wrong by writing the piece, he's supposed to cover the events that go on in the SEO community. I simply didn't think sphinn needed to cover that ground again.
I'm all for someone presenting the other side of the argument, but please be consistent in your argument.
For example, you say:
Unless Michael knows of a man that was turned away recently, his rant is just that, a baseless rant that attempts to damage BlogHer.But then claim that women have been descriminated against by stating:
Why is BlogHer needed? Because every time the gender card is played in regards to why women never speak at conferences, the organizers swear up and down that "they tried". That "they contacted women" and "they didn't respond".
If you're going to require Michael to produce proof of a male who was turned away recently, the least you should do is provide an example of a woman who was turned away because of her gender.
You imply that conferences don't actually try to contact women speakers but you have no more proof than Michael does.
The title of the post is quite misleading. Despite saying "Meta Tags are Dead" the author puts this disclaimer at the beginning of the post:
For the purpose of this blog post, when I say “Meta tags” I am referring to the Meta description and keyword tags only.However, even with that disclaimer, the post is still absolutely wrong. Description tags still play an important role at the very least in determining how many people click through to your site from the SERPs.
It's ironic, in trying to dispell misinformation the author only serves up more misinformation. After seeing a related post entitled Domain Authority Does Not Affect Your Rankings it looks like this is a habit for this blog.
@baiduyou, what do you mean "face up to the spam issue"? Any social site is going to be spammed. It's that simple. I don't see Edward ranting and raving about all the spam Digg gets... to somehow blame Sphinn for the fact that it's targeted by spammers is just retarded.
This is nothing more than a pathetic plea for attention and I for one don't care to spend anymore time reading his self righteous rantings.
Who cares if spam remains after it's "seemingly removed from this site"?
If it's "seemingly removed" then it's no longer affecting the users experience on the site and doesn't matter. Sure Sphinn might want to take a look at the issue for their own purposes (rankings etc) but that's only if they a) notice the site being harmed by it or b) even care.
@DarkMatter - do you keep up with the updates? I've seen people get hit but luckily I've never had to deal with that issue. I wonder if certain niches tend to get hit more than others?
Yeah, I'd have to agree that SEMPO probably doesn't accurately represent the industry. However, I'm not sure where else you'd be able to get this kind of data from either.
Story: Addicted to Social Media?