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World wide wasteland

zemanta.com

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Re: World wide wasteland

#71

Post by olliesaunders »

philiphodgen wrote: post #54

@Swizec, too bad your message was negated by the video pimping Zemanta at the end. Outbound links to cool stuff generated by a machine? That's exactly what you were mourning. Love cannot be automated. Certain battery-operated appliances have been invented to attempt this (I've heard), but they can't replicate the real thing. Links to good stuff cannot be automated. Selecting good stuff to link to requires good taste…

This Zemanta thing reminds me of the Alexa toolbar—I think that’s what it was, I’m going back as much as a decade here—that shows you links related to the page you are currently already on. Back in the day people were really excited about the Alexa toolbar for some reason.

Re: World wide wasteland

#72

Post by Swizec »

philiphodgen wrote: post #54

@Swizec, too bad your message was negated by the video pimping Zemanta at the end. Outbound links to cool stuff generated by a machine? That's exactly what you were mourning. Love cannot be automated. Certain battery-operated appliances have been invented to attempt this (I've heard), but they can't replicate the real thing. Links to good stuff cannot be automated. Selecting good stuff to link to requires good taste…

As far as I understand the link love direction Zemanta is taking, it's more about helping a user to use their judgement and good taste when recommending links to their readers.

That's how I use it anyway (albeit somewhat lazily at times).

Re: World wide wasteland

#73

Post by n0mad01 »

i call this bs. theres never been more links on "personal" sites & blogs than now. it's an information desert because a huge amount of the links are dead or simply garbage.

Re: World wide wasteland

#74

Post by guimarin »

thenomad wrote: post #69
ChuckMcM wrote: post #63

Someone [1] out there is also shaking down the smaller web sites by scaring them. We (blekko.com) get requests from website owners or their representative saying they've been told their ratings in Google are harmed by all the links to their site so please remove any links we have to their site (and then they give a URL which is a search for their site on our search engine). I assure them that Google does not use our…

Unfortunately, post-Google's Penguin update, there is very strong evidence that some types of links can indeed harm people's ranks in Google. That's such a fundemental change to the way that SEO works that it's had people running scared for a while now.

That is a very serious claim. Do you have any data/evidence to support this, or is it all strongly worded opinion? If that were actually true, it would be grounds for regulatory action under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Many companies other than Google depend on the interconnectedness of the web, as represented by, among other things, inter-site linkages.

Re: World wide wasteland

#75

Post by andraz »

olliesaunders wrote: post #71
philiphodgen wrote: post #54

@Swizec, too bad your message was negated by the video pimping Zemanta at the end. Outbound links to cool stuff generated by a machine? That's exactly what you were mourning. Love cannot be automated. Certain battery-operated appliances have been invented to attempt this (I've heard), but they can't replicate the real thing. Links to good stuff cannot be automated. Selecting good stuff to link to requires good taste…

This Zemanta thing reminds me of the Alexa toolbar—I think that’s what it was, I’m going back as much as a decade here—that shows you links related to the page you are currently already on. Back in the day people were really excited about the Alexa toolbar for some reason.

Well Zemanta tries to help the author instead of reader. That might sound like a small difference, but it actually is a huge shift - author is a human filter and things that the end reader see are not computer-recommendations, but human selected ones.

Re: World wide wasteland

#76

Post by nmridul »

guimarin wrote: post #74
thenomad wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, post-Google's Penguin update, there is very strong evidence that some types of links can indeed harm people's ranks in Google. That's such a fundemental change to the way that SEO works that it's had people running scared for a while now.

That is a very serious claim. Do you have any data/evidence to support this, or is it all strongly worded opinion? If that were actually true, it would be grounds for regulatory action under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Many companies other than Google depend on the interconnectedness of the web, as represented by, among other things, inter-site linkages.

Data Directly from from Google -

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-s...

If you go the black hat way or even get links the black hat way, that could get you into trouble.

Its scary because sometimes this is all that is needed by your competitor for some one to kick you out of the search engine. Specially when you are just starting up and you have very few white hat links (genuine links) and some one just blasts you with the black hat links.

Re: World wide wasteland

#77

Post by thenomad »

guimarin wrote: post #74
thenomad wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, post-Google's Penguin update, there is very strong evidence that some types of links can indeed harm people's ranks in Google. That's such a fundemental change to the way that SEO works that it's had people running scared for a while now.

That is a very serious claim. Do you have any data/evidence to support this, or is it all strongly worded opinion? If that were actually true, it would be grounds for regulatory action under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Many companies other than Google depend on the interconnectedness of the web, as represented by, among other things, inter-site linkages.

Matt Cutts confirms that some links can harm your site here - http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-reco...

Here's an example of a site which recovered from a Penguin penalty by removing external links - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-pe...?

And here's some more general data analysis - http://www.micrositemasters.com/blog/penguin-analysis-seo-is...

Re: World wide wasteland

#78

Post by koningrobot »

philiphodgen wrote: post #54

@Swizec, too bad your message was negated by the video pimping Zemanta at the end. Outbound links to cool stuff generated by a machine? That's exactly what you were mourning. Love cannot be automated. Certain battery-operated appliances have been invented to attempt this (I've heard), but they can't replicate the real thing. Links to good stuff cannot be automated. Selecting good stuff to link to requires good taste…

What a karma-whoring red herring. But I'll bite. There's nothing fundamentally special about humans. There's also nothing fundamentally special about love. Not even if you use the word "love" to mean three different things in a single comment.
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