May 12
2008
2008
This is for outside the UK
This is for the USA
Jan 02
2008
2008
Mock Reply
Posted by Simon in MiscDoug wrote:
“Do you honestly that a paid link should give the buyer of that link an added boost in Google? Do you? Do you really? If so, why? Explain in exact detail why you might believe that a site should be able to buy their way to the top of organic listings?”
But the question is how do you effectively stop the problem. Of course most people don’t want to see others gain an unfair advantage, but there is a school of thought that reasons that the only long term way to address this issue is to look at the bigger picture. That picture presents us with lots of links within poor quality or irrelevant content, in combination with a lack of adequate filtering to single them out.
My question is, how can you deal with that core problem by 2nd guessing issues of motive and morality? Google must look at what is on web pages, that is all it can ever know. The response of trying to induce webmasters to add code to their websites to identify particular things for search engines makes no sense though. The true culprits aren’t going to adhere to it are they, so it makes a farce of the whole objective. Since you can’t rely on it, you should not make it the focus of the problem.
What is more, we are all thinking within our own little world. The majority of website owners probably haven’t heard of PPP, ReviewMe, TLA, maybe not even nofollow for that matter lol. But I can guarentee money will still change hands in order for promotions, product placements, and everything else that takes place. Therefore, nofollow can never be an adequate solution, and so once again, it falls to the search engines to come up with their own solutions. That is the only way things can be.
Buying your way to the top - well, unless you’re going to take out the real problem (the human factor), you’re stuck with it. You can’t contol the millions of people on the web, and stop all forms of compensation. That also assumes that people never deserve compensation for something they may do, which may involve the placing of a link too.
People like myself or jmorris aren’t arguing that Google should just let people buy their way to the top in any case. What we are saying is that focusing on one property of a link (it being paid), isn’t helpful in the long run. It doesn’t tell me if that link is well placed, or benefits the reader, which is the entire point of Google, is it not?
Whether a link is paid for or not, the underlying problem is surely always one of whether the link is actually worth its place on the page? And that dilemma isn’t solved by looking at compensation, in my opinion.
Whereas you would argue that we are not looking at the big picture, we would say the same of you. Protecting the index is about tackling the true problems, not bandaging up the symptoms, especially when Google can never know where the symptom really appears.
Dec 16
2007
2007
Testing Updated Plugin
Posted by Simon in MiscThis is a test topic, designed to test the new logic in the conversations module of the OIOpublisher Direct Plugin for Wordpress. It will now (hopefully) save a topic or reply ID for draft posts, so people don’t forget it later.
Nov 24
2007
2007
Is it really the future?
Posted by Simon in MiscAs you can see, we’re now on a different blog! I’ve done a search from the blog for new conversations within groups I’ve joined. Since this blog is also in the “Test Group”, it came up with the conversation topic “The Future of Blogging”. I then clicked on the add reply link, which took me to the post management screen.
The only difference to a normal post, is that the “respond to a conversation” box has been filled when clicking on the reply link. That tells OIOpublisher that there is a reply needing processing. This reply, if authenticated (and allowed by the original poster), will then appear below the post.
Let’s publish and see what happens!
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