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Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

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Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#11

Post by mvandemar »

bobbyi wrote: post #8

I don't understand how the author can say that there aren't coupons on those coupon pages. Apparently since the coupons are from an affiliate program with Savings.com they don't count. When I go to the "1800Pools Coupons" page that he linked, the main content box has an offer for "$25 off Orders Over $500" . When I click on this, it tells me that the coupon code is "AFF25" and can be added during checkout on the 1800…

Savings.com != Mahalo.com. There is no reason to rank Mahalo... if that is the site being looked for then rank Savings.com instead.

It is what is known as a "thin affiliate" site, and it adds a layer of navigation to the user and middleman payouts to the advertiser, lowering user experience and driving up advertiser costs.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#12

Post by bobbyi »

mvandemar wrote: post #11
bobbyi wrote: post #8

I don't understand how the author can say that there aren't coupons on those coupon pages. Apparently since the coupons are from an affiliate program with Savings.com they don't count. When I go to the "1800Pools Coupons" page that he linked, the main content box has an offer for "$25 off Orders Over $500" . When I click on this, it tells me that the coupon code is "AFF25" and can be added during checkout on the 1800…

Savings.com != Mahalo.com. There is no reason to rank Mahalo... if that is the site being looked for then rank Savings.com instead. It is what is known as a "thin affiliate" site, and it adds a layer of navigation to the user and middleman payouts to the advertiser, lowering user experience and driving up advertiser costs.

But Savings.com isn't "the site being looked for". The user has never heard of Savings.com and doesn't care about them. They user is looking for coupon codes and they are listed clearly on the Mahalo landing page.

The point of an affiliate program is to let other people distribute the coupons, so it's not as if he is doing something shady by "scraping" content from elsewhere as the article implies.

I do agree that he is violating AdSense rules and shouldn't have the AdSense boxes on those pages, but (correct me if I'm wrong) Matt Cutts isn't involved in AdSense and is just focussed on indexing, so that's not the issue at hand when the author is attacking him.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#13

Post by jcalacanis »

rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

Thank you.... and I agree.

We are 100% SEO compliment to best practices and we delete/deindex/build out any community pages that are short every month. Google Knol, Wikipedia, About.com, eHow and Associated Content don't do this!

We are uber agressive about removing short pages, and investing thousands of dollars in top pages. like these two: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords

These claims by hater SEOs are basically B.S. They take the last 10,000 pages the community are working on and say "gotcha!!! these pages suck!" Well, they are being worked on! Come back in 60-90 days and they will be built out or they will be deindexed. that simple.

... absurd.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#14

Post by mvandemar »

mvandemar wrote: post #11
bobbyi wrote: post #8

I don't understand how the author can say that there aren't coupons on those coupon pages. Apparently since the coupons are from an affiliate program with Savings.com they don't count. When I go to the "1800Pools Coupons" page that he linked, the main content box has an offer for "$25 off Orders Over $500" . When I click on this, it tells me that the coupon code is "AFF25" and can be added during checkout on the 1800…

Savings.com != Mahalo.com. There is no reason to rank Mahalo... if that is the site being looked for then rank Savings.com instead. It is what is known as a "thin affiliate" site, and it adds a layer of navigation to the user and middleman payouts to the advertiser, lowering user experience and driving up advertiser costs.

re: But Savings.com isn't "the site being looked for".

Yes, it is, the searcher doesn't know that though. That's Google's job, to rank the most relevant sites to the query. If those coupons are what the user is looking for then that site is what should come up first.

I also want to add that at this moment Savings.com does indeed outrank Mahalo.com for that query. While this may change (and based on past experience with Mahalo's empty pages many of them will outrank other sites that are higher quality eventually), that is not what the bulk of the issue is. Those Savings.com feeds are not "human powered" anything. They are exactly the kinds of pages that Jason told Matt Cutts he had removed from his site. They are the antithesis of what Jason claimed his site was all about just 4 days ago. That's the main issue.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#15

Post by davidw »

rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

I wouldn't submit one of these myself, but I think the reason they keep turning up is pretty evident:

Superficially (in the sense that I've never really looked carefully), it looks like he's gaming Google and getting away with it, which is a pretty big deal if it's true.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#17

Post by axod »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #10
rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

That would be great if Google would forget them. Occasionally I'll search for something and see a Mahalo page that seems to have at least a pointer to what I need, when in reality I'm just inundated with AdSense and the content that seemed to be there either isn't anymore or never was (i.e., it was a crappily autogenerated page that has an intro paragraph seemingly from someone's blog or something with no link or oth…

Doesn't Google have a feature:

[x] Never show me any more results from foo.com I hate that site. Remember my preference.

If not, it should do.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#18

Post by covercash »

jcalacanis wrote: post #13
rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

Thank you.... and I agree. We are 100% SEO compliment to best practices and we delete/deindex/build out any community pages that are short every month. Google Knol, Wikipedia, About.com, eHow and Associated Content don't do this! We are uber agressive about removing short pages, and investing thousands of dollars in top pages. like these two: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.co…

Is this a fake account?

I thought this was Jason's HN account: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonmcalacanis

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#20

Post by axod »

jcalacanis wrote: post #13
rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

Thank you.... and I agree. We are 100% SEO compliment to best practices and we delete/deindex/build out any community pages that are short every month. Google Knol, Wikipedia, About.com, eHow and Associated Content don't do this! We are uber agressive about removing short pages, and investing thousands of dollars in top pages. like these two: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.co…

I see http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake has 4 adsense units on it. Adsense says you're allowed a maximum of 3.

Something I'm missing? Or is there some special Google deal by which you can add more than 3 and get away with it?

In terms of user experience, I think the ratio of content to adverts on that page (Which you seem to cite as a good page) is way out. Tons of adverts / cross promotion etc, and a little bit of content in the middle.

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