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Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

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Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#51

Post by numbchuckskills »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #45
euroclydon wrote: post #28

Malhalo is starting to remind me of that (was it a Canadian) company who was making all that money off of pay-per-click arbitrage between to search/ad networks, and then one day, Google cut them off cold turkey. Who were they?

GeoSign. This is the thing. The huge spotlight that guys like Aaron Wall are pointing at Mahalo right now I'm sure is making Calacanis and Co sweating bullets. For big cases like this, it's often a matter of managing perceptions and Google may definitely take action if the story becomes big enough. The thing is, there are quite a few sites that really skirt the edge of what is acceptable. When these sites/companies a…

Couldn't agree more. The reason why Mahalo gets so many up-votes is because we're all wanting to see how Google reacts. For now I'd say "dont' be evil" isn't really holding true, but they can't ignore it forever.

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#52

Post by epi0Bauqu »

icey wrote: post #47
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #43

FWIW, these pages have been removed from Duck Duck Go for quite some time.

Did you have to manually cull results from Mahalo, or did your algorithm discard them automatically?

Some automatic, but to be safe I put a manual block on them, which I do for big "useless" sites I keep (or users keep) seeing again and again.

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#53

Post by cscotta »

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #48
omarchowdhury wrote: post #3

When will we stop hearing about Calacanis and Mahalo? The only thing I take away from the whole thing is how effective manipulating search engines can be. And I already knew this. From blackhat SEOs. The only thing the blackhats haven't taught me is how to get into the Google index and stay there - how are you doing it, Calacanis?

This is getting a little silly I agree. I guess the SEOs are not going to stop so we're all going to have to suffer as they create spam pages in Mahalo and then point to them and say "Calacanis allows spam!" Update: 1. Did we have show short pages in Mahalo? Yes. 2. How did they get there? Our users start topic pages and don't finish them. 3. Were they getting traffic? Not really... like 4. Why does this keep coming…

Would you care to comment on the "noindex" issue? It would be interesting to hear how these are applied and removed (algorithmically, by hand, etc?).

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#54

Post by icey »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #52
icey wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have to manually cull results from Mahalo, or did your algorithm discard them automatically?

Some automatic, but to be safe I put a manual block on them, which I do for big "useless" sites I keep (or users keep) seeing again and again.

Seeing as you operate a search engine, what's your take on this whole thing? Do you feel this all truly lies in a gray area, or that there is a clear-cut way things ought to be in this situation?

As an aside, your comment about blocking sites manually for your users just crystallized the value of DuckDuckGo (and by extension other smaller search engines) to me. There is definite value in a search engine that has some opinions about what kind of results are considered quality results. There's probably a name for this; but "curated search engine" or "opinionated search engine" don't seem right.

It's kind of like the difference between a micro-brew and Google's Budweiser.

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#55

Post by nfnaaron »

scott_s wrote: post #21
alain94040 wrote: post #4

Shame on Google algorithms for not automatically being able to detect a page without content. Over the years, my view of the Google's ranking algorithms went from dream-like (they are so smart they understand everything) to infant-like (just a bunch of keyword counters). Obviously there has to be huge complexity involved, so my current view must be pessimistic, but still... Just one (unrelated) example: search for "l…

Google is a tool, and like all tools, you need to learn how to use it. Two of your keywords are unnecessary, and I think that caused the problem. First, you don't need "leader." If you're looking for the top of something, you already get that information from the ordering of results. Second, "online" is redundant, since anything you look for will probably be "online." (And I suppose you don't need "in," but I don't t…

"First, you don't need "leader.""

Unless he wanted to find a page writing about "leader," like a review, or even an ad, rather than the top google-ranked used car page itself.

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#57

Post by epi0Bauqu »

icey wrote: post #54
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some automatic, but to be safe I put a manual block on them, which I do for big "useless" sites I keep (or users keep) seeing again and again.

Seeing as you operate a search engine, what's your take on this whole thing? Do you feel this all truly lies in a gray area, or that there is a clear-cut way things ought to be in this situation? As an aside, your comment about blocking sites manually for your users just crystallized the value of DuckDuckGo (and by extension other smaller search engines) to me. There is definite value in a search engine that has some…

It's all about perceived user quality. Google has guidelines, but if you read closely they qualify them with we can do whatever we want. They keep making the call that keeping Mahalo in is better for whatever reason, perhaps because they think it will bad PR (censorship?), or they'll get a lot of complaints (where is mahalo.com?) or maybe just because they don't see data that it is bad for users now (site metrics).

I think what angers people legitimately is two fold. First, Mahalo seems to be doing stuff that gets other people banned. Second, they're seemingly being really sketchy about it.

Personally, I think they are on the whole useless pages and am happy to block them. There are certainly a subset of useful pages, and I'd consider doing a tighter integration where I could promote just those pages in our Zero-click Info boxes. Same goes for something like Yahoo! Answers. Most of their pages are useless, but they have a subset that are really useful.

To your latter point, I couldn't agree more. I'm much more aggressive at de-listing what I deem to be "useless" sites. Google can't do this because they'd get too much flack for it, e.g. censorship.

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#58

Post by profgubler »

vaksel wrote: post #27
browser411 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goog's 60% market share is understated, too. Yahoo and Bing often point search results back to their own networks (Yahoo & MSN respectively). So third parties like Mahalo probably see Google driving much more than 60% of their search traffic on average.

For me Google usually brings 88-92% of SE traffic, that's the same for most people. Google is understating their market share, because essentially they have a monopoly, and if that was widely known, they'd be regulated in no time.

I normally see north of 80 on the sites I work with, but I have never seen as high as you have gotten.

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#59

Post by vaksel »

profgubler wrote: post #58
vaksel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Google usually brings 88-92% of SE traffic, that's the same for most people. Google is understating their market share, because essentially they have a monopoly, and if that was widely known, they'd be regulated in no time.

I normally see north of 80 on the sites I work with, but I have never seen as high as you have gotten.

it's mostly due to indexing, Google has a few thousand pages indexed, while Bing and Yahoo have a few hundred

Re: Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags

#60

Post by Perceval »

josefresco wrote: post #30
jcromartie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jason Calacanis is a guy who runs a sweatshop building a website you've probably never been to and never will because you're a smart person who doesn't fall for spam. He also has made a career out of being a professional asshole and making fun of "lifestyle businesses" that make products that people like and pay for. He thinks that if you're not a workaholic and want to enjoy your short time here on Earth then you sh…

Keep your personal opinions out of this debate, please. This is who Jason is for those who do not know why his 'bad behavior' is so watched and talked about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Calacanis

I think it's reprehensible that parent has been downvoted. Ad hominem is ad hominem, no matter how deserving we think the target might be. Great-grandparent poster asked a question, ostensibly seeking an informative answer. What they got was grand-parent's uninformative tirade. While it certainly represents how people feel about Calcanis, it does not in any way answer great-grandparent's question, it is not informative, and it undermines the norm of civil discourse that we should expect on HN.

Refresher: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

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