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mphung
I think raising the number of sphinns required would actually backfire. It would ensure that ONLY people aggressively participating in the social media circle jerk (or, to be fair, people who have huge brand leverage even if they aren't guilty of the circle jerking) would have their stories go hot. When Digg changed their algo, it did the opposite of what they claimed they intended: it basically decreased diversity on the FP to the point where only "power diggers" had any hope of hitting it simply because they were the only ones with a strong enough following to push their way past the bigger hurdle.
Was I just told to grow a pair b/c I said there was circle jerking (it's my favorite sphinn-related analogy: circle jerk, there I said it again) ... or was that only reserved for those who downvoted rae's comment ? ;)
I think there are some good suggestions here. Probably the bigger issue, in my pair-less (?) opinion, is that the audience needs to be bigger and more diverse. That should naturally increase vote counts on the truly good articles. Most of the non-SEO/PPC folks I push this too, however, just don't get engaged with what's here.
In terms of how I use sphinn... I read the recent comments. I don't submit stuff or ask people to vote or look at the front page. The comments is where I find value and how I know what's hot. I concede that I probably miss a lot of good stuff that way, but oh well.
So why don't we just try it? Why not up the threshold and see what happens? If the results suck, we go back? We're small enough that it shouldn't be a huge deal to experiment a little. To be honest, though, I bet I'll end up sticking to just checking the comments queue no matter what happens.
>> But if you'd like to think it was for you specifically, so you can get emo, go for it ;-)
I'm soooo blue! Why is it all so haaaaard? How come nobody luuuuuuvs meeeee?
;)
Hey, how come Streko hasn't been in here yet telling all of us that we've been sipping the lame sauce?
That's gotta screw with your analytics. As an advertiser I'd say NO THANKS to that little test.
LOL - okay aside from the love/hate birds debate (I love birds, btw) as well as the kudos deserved by Rae (I especially like the line about "I'm not an affiliate, I'm not an SEO, I'm an entrepreneur")... I just gotta get one thing off my chest:
@lkiryxa - you go to a place like sphinn and think you're fooling anyone by dropping a link into a punctuation mark? You honestly don't think that sticks out like a sore thumb? LOL
It's been fluctuating. For a couple of hours it'll be fixed and then it breaks again.
"Is that by its very nature the SEO industry is much more transparent and there is no SEO ethics board (thank god), as a result we have to discuss these issues on our own medium and as a result will in itself be making them public. Otherwise there is absolutely no reprecussons for the "SEO Company"."
Except that the company being outed wasn't doing anything even borderline "unethical." I think our industry is way too cavalier about throwing the word "ethics" around. Using low-quality links to get your site ranked has nothing to do with ethics. In fact, using black hat techniques doesn't have anything to do with ethics/morality either. Using your industry clout to destroy a competitor (allegedly) for outranking you on a term you want to dominate, when they've done nothing wrong... that tends to be much more a question of what's ethical and what's not.
This community sure does like to build them up just so it can tear them back down. And the bigger we've built them, the harder they fall, and the more sadistic pleasure we seem to take in kicking them on the way down. Would this SEO controversy of the week (or last week's) really have gotten this ugly if it hadn't been SEO's golden boy at the center?
As a wise man once told me, you're never as good as they think when they love you, but neither are you as bad as they think when they've turned against you. I.e. public opinion is always a bit hyperbolic.
On the record now: I thought the excessive fanboy-like love accorded to Rand & Co always seemed way out of proportion to anything real. But the vitriol being slung at him personally over this is way over the top too.
Let's get some perspective, and not turn this into some sort of personal witch hunt.
Good points... but doesn't address the "psycho ex-girlfriend" dangers. Just because the person you're meeting is nice, doesn't necessarily mean you're safe from getting stalked and threatened later on by a third party. heehee ;)
Story: Twitter As a Terrorist Tool?
I've heard that terrorists (as well as socialists, atheists and illegal immigrants) could potentially use cell phones to communicate with each other, so I threw my cell phone down the toilet. Better safe than sorry, right?
Nothing new. As Danny said, this is how results with Sitelinks are displayed.
What paisley said in the comments on your site: don't guest blog for lame people.
What you're describing isn't a problem inherent in guest blogging; it's either an issue of miscommunication or the fact that the people you're allowing use of your name and content are being very uncool.
Given that you've already started making a name for yourself, why not take a break from guest blogging for a little bit and build up authority on your own site?
While I do think guest blogging can be beneficial, it should be done selectively. Now sounds like a good time to focus on adding content where it matters most... your own blog.
Damn you guys. I was all done participating in Sphinn and then you have to go and post something that's far more relevant to the community than 95% of the submissions.
As a point of contention, however, I need to say that durian has to be added to your list of fruit that is awful. Have you ever smelled durian? Holy @$@*! that stuff is nasty.
Story: Plurk, You’re A Needy B****!
@winooski - I remember Yahoo Mindset had a slider like that. It was pretty cool. It would be neat to be able to target contextual ads according to known intent, as well -- i.e., for users looking for information, show them articles and reviews, but show users who are ready to buy actual product pages.
Story: My XML Sitemap Hell
I'm still not sure I believe the simple causal argument. Maybe there was something else going on too?
Story: My XML Sitemap Hell
Hmm... I've dealt with some f'd up sitemaps and I've never seen this happen to my sites. Low priority might have delayed crawling, but I've never seen pages disappear from the index because of the priority that was set in the xml file. Any idea why setting a low crawl priority would cause pages to get de-indexed? I'd like to understand this better.
I think I've said something along the same lines before: just because you're famous for being Internet famous doesn't make you a marketing (or PR) pro.
"At least one of the operators of these sites is certifiably insane." ... absolutely true! If you do a Google search on his name you'll find lots of evidence that he is known not only for hiding from the law, but also for being a total fruitcake. Unfortunately, people doing research on a company aren't also doing research on the person leaving the complaint (or the complaint board's owner) to put it all into context.
I recently worked for a company that was a target on a complaint site, and although we couldn't prove it, we were quite certain that many of the complaints were written by the site's owner, NOT disgruntled customers. The fact that he asked us for a modest fee (of half a million dollars or so) to "help" clean up our online reputation might look like a legitimate online reputation managment business or it could look like extortion, depending on how astute you were. Funny how the complaints started getting worse (and how very well optimized they were for searches on our name) and how we were no longer able to respond to them when we politely declined his offer to "help".
Not everything is always as it first appears when it comes to online flames. Clearly some people have an agenda other than the "truth"; it's naive to think that all complaints or attacks are provoked or justified.
@darkmatter - these sites might not have brand recognition themselves, but they rank well on searches for company names (i.e, when potential customers do research to make sure a site they want to buy from is legit, they'll Google the site's name and find these "reviews" at the top of the SERPs). They absolutely can influence consumer behavior.
Story: The Power of FREE!
This was pretty amusing. He outlines crazy ways he tried to get traffic and how/why they failed. That topic itself is as appropriate to this forum as much of the other stuff that gets submitted here. Remember, Sphinn isn't just for SEO, it's about internet marketing techniques - ways to get traffic, and ways not to get traffic, qualifies.
Wowsa! First post to get sphunn from my blog in years. Thanks EvilGreenMonkey. Now, quick, someone report it as spam so Hack can write another post about me =)
Story: It's time to raise the Sphinn bar