How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
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Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#2Is there actually a benefit from doing this for Mahalo? Wouldn't google just recognize that their content is duped all over the place?
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#3based on the age of my random selection of those domain names, they started doing it early this year.
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#4Is there actually a benefit from doing this for Mahalo? Wouldn't google just recognize that their content is duped all over the place?
mahalo seems to be reasonably smart with their SEO trickery. i'd guess that they tested it and found benefits.
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#5Is there actually a benefit from doing this for Mahalo? Wouldn't google just recognize that their content is duped all over the place?
Keyword domains are something that SEO people have been using for a long time. It isn't really against terms of service, especially not if you actually have different content on each domain. Basically, you can boost your site's ranking by setting up numerous smaller sites that funnel traffic and Google PR to your site.
It works for some, but isn't my chosen technique for getting quality web traffic.
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#6Is there actually a benefit from doing this for Mahalo? Wouldn't google just recognize that their content is duped all over the place?
mahalo seems to be reasonably smart with their SEO trickery. i'd guess that they tested it and found benefits.
No no, you have it all wrong. Jason said he doesn't know anything about SEO and just happens to accidentally stumble on all the techniques (then apologizes but doesn't stop using them).
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#7This is autoblogging. This won't work. Google will see the blog theme fingerprint and will either lessen the index or de-index. Also, the dupe content is another factor that gets you de-indexed.
Now if they used a generic, common theme, and different themes; and then if they used unique, synonymized content -- these things would perhaps get past the Google filter unless of course something triggers a manual review at Google and a human checks it.
A site has flags at Google (that's the theory) and if you throw enough flags, then it sometimes triggers an automatic de-index or PR lessening. In some cases, and again this is all theory, it triggers a manual review and they have a human review what's going on to see if they need to alert the core team on a search engine tweak.
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#8I think calling these these kinds of practices "Search Engine Optimisation" is a little perverse. "Search Engine Deception" would be a better term. This is precisely the sort of thing that makes SEO such as shady business nowadays. It might work for now, but it's still a hack based on the current implementation of search engines that will likely be punished later on.
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#9Contrary to what these initial comments are suggesting, Mahalo isn't duplicating content across all of these sites. These sites are each targeted at specific verticals, and (are intended to) only have questions and answers related to that vertical. It's a strategy that worked for Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. (to a degree--eventually a lot of superniche blogs were shuttered or consolidated into the higher-profile brands) and I suspect it'll work again.
As for Google's rankings, I don't think these sites are any worse off than the Stack Exchange sites, which all share the same basic design and markup and many of the same boilerplate About, etc. pages.
Is it great for users, i.e. people actually trying to find answers? Well, that's an open question. I think ultimately it is because someone looking for FarmVille answers (yes, Mahalo has such a site, and yes, an incredible number of people have FarmVille questions) is going to get more relevant results than they'll find on Mahalo Answers proper. If these sites didn't exist would they find better, or faster, answers to their questions? I think sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. Generally answers on Mahalo Answers are higher-quality than, say, Yahoo! Answers, which I see showing up in the results for many of my Google searches.
I don't blame anyone for disliking the practice--it does have a bit of a smell--but I do think it's a good business decision for Calacanis et al.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Jason Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. and Propeller (nee Netscape.com) and enjoyed the experience. I haven't talked to him in a couple years but I bet if I called him up he'd do me a solid. Oh, I was also an early Mahalo beta-tester and use Mahalo Answers once every couple of months.)
Re: How long has Mahalo been using keyword domains like this?
#10There are two things going on here.
1. Generating domains that match exact search terms is very common and can be quite effective. This is not 'bad' in google ethics - think of how there is no search bar in chrome - when i type 'hacker news' into chrome, hackernews.com is #3; the line between a search and almost typing in an exact domain name makes these domains valuable, and uneducated users who don't know the difference between a search and a domain mean this won't change anytime soon.
2. Mahalo could be auto-generating content that should be penalized because it is duplicate or spammy. This is, within the terms of the googleverse, 'bad' and can be penalized. However it's not clear that all of those sites are exactly the same (i didn't click through each one) - they may be different enough but just share a similar URL structure, which if the content is different, is not really an issue.