Archive for January, 2010
More PROOF Jason Calacanis is a ____
Publicly Jason claims to be ignorant about SEO because it allows him moral flexibility and makes Google less likely to torch his site (even though he is blatantly violating their search quality guidelines, and has for *years*).
But when you look at the sales material that Mahalo pitches to corporations, in the 19 page PDF reads like an à la carte menu of SEO services, rather than sales material from a company ignorant of of SEO.
It includes a slide which highlights how well Mahalo Answers questions rank in Google titled “SEO value,” as well as the following statements (followed by my comments):
- Questions are imported from Partners’ Answers Community into Mahalo Answers, enabling 100% share of voice and high SEO value. (filling Google with duplicate content)
- Category Selection Based on Keyword Intelligence and Customer Goals (doing keyword research, an SEO service)
- Community seeded with high-value questions and answers (does the word “seeded” mean asking fake questions?)
- By carefully policing the site, Mahalo keeps out inappropriate content, thus increasing engagement and utility. (no mention of the half million+ pages indexed in Google which contained scraped 3rd party content?)
- We can help our partners increase their search engine rankings with these high quality pages. (that is the actual text from their slide titled “HowTo”)
- Mahalo’s team of editors will find the most highly-trafficked search terms and keywords for your brand, industry or product and build corresponding high-quality pages that will rank well. (isn’t that exactly what “scummy” SEO companies do Jason?)
Given that Mahalo is now branded as an SEO play (in their own words), and that they scrape millions of content listings to publish on their pages, are creating tons of other duplicate content, have actively engaged in link farming, and are not above “seeding” questions based on keyword value, why should Google trust *any* of their business practices going forward? Especially when their SEO services enterprise was launched on the back of calling SEOs scumbags.
How can the Google web spam team members look themselves in the mirror each morning hunting smaller webmasters and ignoring operations like Mahalo? It must begin to feel arbitrary at some point, no?
Why Mahalo (and Other Content Scrapers) Render Google’s Spam Team Flaccid
I was talking to a friend yesterday who was at a conference where Demand Media’s CEO spoke, and he stated that nobody asked the big question: “what if google decides they don’t like you anymore?”
Then I got thinking about how Google torched Squidoo after Jason Calacanis went on his public campaign to rebrand it as spam. But today under the same level of scrutiny, how is Mahalo (which scrapes millions of 3rd party content listings *without any editorial filter*) not spam? Squidoo at least donates $10,000 a month to charity. Mahalo just “borrows” your content without permission and keeps all the cash.
In the past Google hated content scrapers pretty bad. How bad? Well a guy named Teeceo used to make scraper sites, and here is how Matt Cutts described his work:
In the chat room, I said hello to teeceo, but I know the stuff that he was doing and it’s shoot-on-sight. I think anyone who is blackhat knows (or should know) that I’m happy to talk to anyone, but that we’ll still take action on the spam we find.
Imagine taking that approach to hunting search spam all day long, and then ignoring the *fact* that Mahalo is scraping millions of third party listings and using them as content with no editorial filtering.
Then I started thinking about why the Google spam team could ignore something as outrageous as Mahalo, especially when it was built by a guy who was a false anti-spam evangelist. Is it because Jason is a good guy? No. Is it because there is some actual editorial vetting of the content? no. Is it because Google is getting a cut of the AdSense revenues? Google doesn’t need the short term cash flow (look at all the affiliate AdWords advertisers they just torched), so that is too cynical of a view.
Yes Google wants display inventory (their biggest opportunity for 2010 according to the quarterly call), and these “content” websites have already given themselves over to Google as inventory. But it must be something deeper than that. So I started thinking about it from a longterm strategic level…
Google won’t penalize sites like Mahalo (even though they blatantly violate Google’s guidelines) because Google *wants* to use the works of companies like Mahalo, Demand Media, and Aol to lower the value of other content and bankrupt a lot of the traditional media companies.
Why would Google want to do that?
There is excessive duplication in the marketplace. The faster that duplication is driven out of the marketplace the more desperate companies will be to cut deals with Google. And while there is a down market Google can drive companies out of the market and just claim that it was the economy that did it (much like how Mahalo used the down economy as an excuse to fire most of their editorial staff and replace them with content scraping robots).
Once a lot of media companies are bankrupted, the market is far more efficient, and there are fewer mouths to feed, that means Google can squeeze greater profits margins out of the media ecosystem by getting a fatter cut of the ad revenue.
Currently this shift is risk free because almost nobody understands how the marketplace works. Sure Paul Kedrosky and Mike Arrington blogged about the search results getting spammier, but until you frequently read the above listed sequence on sites outside of the SEO industry there is no damage to the Google brand in them turning the internet into a cesspool.
Once it starts harming the Google brand then I suspect them to act quickly and decisively. And sites like Mahalo will see a sharp drop in traffic. Jason better milk it while he can. The clock is ticking.
Starving Artists in the Age of Cesspool Content
On Hacker News, Melvin, from Web Design Company, had a great analogy on the Mahalo business model
Let’s use a different industry to illustrate what is happening.
Let’s say a band named The Beatles records a new album. The local radio station gets a copy of their album and plays their song. The listeners love it so they play it more often, but they don’t mention who the band is and on their website, they put up a link to download the song… but without any credits. Their audience grows. They get advertisers to advertise to their audience. They say, “hey, playing good songs gets us more listeners and more listeners gets us more advertisers, which gets us more $$. Let’s do this more often.” So they go do this 500,000 times, and each time never mentioning who the artist is. They grow and prosper while the artists starve.
Oh, in the mean time they call the artist scum.
In the above metaphor, the artists are the bloggers whose content Mahalo is using. The radio station ripping off the artist is Mahalo. The Federal Communication Commission is like Google, who is allowing all this to continue because the radio station is giving them a cut from the advertising revenue.
Hope this helps make it a little more clear why what they are doing is wrong, needed to get exposed and needs to get fixed.
The analogy isn’t 100% perfect…but it *is* pretty darn close. 
Jason is not 100% Jim McCormick, but he isn’t 0% either.
How to Avoid Accidentally Damaging Your Site’s SEO
Search engine optimisation is by definition a series of processes designed to make a website stronger and improve its chances of gaining an improved ranking within SERPs for a range of key terms. When everything is done properly, this is exactly what you should achieve; however, there are a few pitfalls that you need to [...]
Javascript FaceBook Auto Friend Add for iMacros
Black Hat SEO used to be about link building, the more the best. Now it’s all about friends.
Even Google, on its search pages results, now shows the tweets from the people with more followers on top.
It’s crucial to start working on gathering a lot of friends, the black hat way, of course.
Here’s a simple Javascript [...]
Whiteboard Friday - Optimizing Topic Pages
Posted by great scott!
This week we’re pleased to welcome Marshall Simmonds, CEO of Define Search Strategies and Chief Strategist for the New York Times, to Whiteboard Studios. Whether or not to use topic pages–and how to use them effectively–is a topic of some debate in the SEO world. Well, who better to ask about it than the guy in charge of SEO strategy for the NYT and About.com, two of the topic page-iest sites on the web?
If you’re using a topic page strategy, or you’ve considered it, watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday. Marshall breaks down how and when they can be effective, pros and cons, as well as expenses and advantages to the strategy.
Doing SEO Work Off-Site
There’s a common misconception that everything in SEO has to be performed within the confines of your own website. In fact, a great deal can be done in the outer peripheries of your site’s sphere to help boost your search engine optimisation efforts.
Link building is done almost exclusively away from your site. Whilst of course [...]
Launching the SEOmoz Free API and Enough Power to Build Open Site Explorer
Posted by Nick Gerner
The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we’ve ever had before. In that same vein, today we’re announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.
Any registered (it’s free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:
- Data for any URL in our index including
- Domain and Page Authority
- mozRank
- total link count
- external, followed link count
- The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
- Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
- The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
- The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain
You’re welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:
- Buzzstream
- Brandwatch
- HubSpot’s Grader Suite
- Quirk’s Search Status toolbar
Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.
Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we’re excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data. The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you’re free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.
In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we’re expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:
- Additional metrics:
- number of domains that link to you
- mozTrust
- number of links to all pages on your domain
- and more
- A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
- Plenty of sorts on links:
- domain authority
- page authority
- linking root domains
- Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you’ve got that many)
This is exactly the same API powering Open Site Explorer. So if you think OSE missed a feature, or should include other data sources, you can build it over again and do an even better job :) If you do, drop me a line and I’ll take a look. We’d love to share partner apps on our wiki, Twitter, the blog, and elsewhere.
We don’t even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source 
To sign up, just contact us, and we’ll start the process.
EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership. A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge. The paid API is extra. Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.
What you Should Look for in an SEO Company
When it comes to outsourcing anything, you need to be sure that you’re putting your business in good hands. SEO is something that is quite new to a lot of people; whilst they understand the importance of having a website, many aren’t all that aware of how exactly to market it. As such, there is [...]
It’s Only A Clique If You’re Not In It
Posted by Dr. Pete
This post started as a reaction to accusations in the SEO industry that Top X lists, awards, etc. are only going to people’s friends. As I was writing it over what ended up being 2 weeks, I realized just how broad this issue really is, from personal to professional to political. I hope you’ll indulge me as I try to do justice to a topic that goes well beyond SEO.
We all know how it feels to be on the outside looking in. You start out feeling awkward and a little envious, but slowly it turns into something worse – depression, resentment, even rage. Eventually, we find a group to belong to, and the tables turn. No matter how often we were excluded (and maybe because of it), we eventually start to exclude others. It’s a vicious, if all too human, cycle, and it extends to every corner of our social interactions.
My Friends Are The Best
Just ask them; I’m sure they’ll agree. Do we prefer our friends? Do we give them the best opportunities and accolades? Absolutely. This is more than bias, though; it’s the simple reality of relevance. If you ask me who the "best" expert is in some niche of my own field or what the best article is on Topic X, I’m going to immediately draw from what I already know. Stating the obvious, I can’t recommend someone or something that I don’t even know exists.
Of course, there are times when we have a responsibility to dig deeper and look for the best candidates outside of our own limited realm of experience. When I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa, I had the opportunity to be the first student in my department to serve on a faculty search committee. One aspect of that experience that stuck with me was Iowa’s affirmative action policy. It wasn’t about numbers and quotas so much as a core philosophy that we had a professional obligation to search far and wide for the best candidate. We had the duty to leave our comfortable world of people just like us and venture into the world of "them".
Confirmation Bias
Beyond simple relevance is something more powerful, and sometimes more insidious. We all have a natural tendency to take sides, and, once we do, to find reasons why our side is right and the other side is wrong. Psychologists call this "confirmation bias," the often unconscious need to find data that confirms what we already believe. If we like someone, we’ll find reasons to support them and give them the benefit of the doubt. If we dislike someone, we’ll find reasons to be suspicious of everything they say and do. If you think confirmation bias is something only other people have, you’re fooling yourself.
Choosing Sides
Beyond our friends, confirmation bias quickly begins to apply to all of our cliques and teams. If you’re a sports fan, then that team mentality is usually just harmless fun – associating with your team provides a shared emotional experience. I’m a Cubs fan – believe me when I say that I understand the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, although not in quite the ratio I’d like. What happens, though, when that team mentality starts to apply to things like politics, as we’ve seen far too often over the past couple of decades (on both sides of the fence)? Suddenly, our clique is 50% of the population, and our enemies are the other 50%. At best, it’s divisive. At worst, it breeds hate, violence, and bigotry.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Of course, we all like to think that we’re free from bias, but the power of bias is that the flaws that are obvious in others are often hidden and unconscious in ourselves. If I mention that I do SEO, do you picture a savvy internet guru or spam-spewing snake-oil salesman? If you’re an SEO, and you hear that I work with SEOmoz, do you think I’m a paragon of white-hat virtue or part of Rand’s evil conspiracy to take over the industry? Reality is probably somewhere in between. If I tell you that I voted for Obama, do you see a beacon of liberal hope or a Communist bent on destroying our nation? I can assure you that I am neither. So, how do we get past these labels and start to understand people, whether personally or professionally?
Get to Know People
Social media has given us a difficult dichotomy. On the one hand, it’s never been easier to "friend" people in shallow and meaningless ways. On the other hand, we have the tools to get to know our peers and friends of friends in ways that were never before possible. The next time you friend someone, take a moment and find out something about them. Where are they from? What do they do? What kind of music do they like? Do they blog? If they do, read a post. If you see a label ("liberal", "conservative", "Twilight fan"), don’t jump to conclusions. Give that person a chance to speak for themselves.
Play In a Different Park
It’s easy to be self-righteous when you’re surrounded by your fan-boys and girls. It’s easy to get a standing ovation at your campaign rally when you only invite the people who gave you the most money. If you want perspective, you have to give up the home-field advantage. If you disagree with someone, comment on their post instead of running back home to write a rant. Try guest-blogging – even better, guest-blog in a different industry. Try to explain why SEO is worthwhile to an audience of small business owners, designers or UX professionals. It’ll be a tough sell, but you’ll learn a lot in the process.
When In Doubt, Ask
Social media is a mine field of misunderstanding – if you’re not sure what someone means in that 140-character Tweet, ask them. If they write a blog post that seems like a personal attack, call them. It’s not just about being nice – bad blood runs deep, and today’s simple misunderstanding could destroy relationships and opportunities tomorrow.
Open Your Circle
We all remember the people who excluded us, and we too often hold that fact against the universe. Let it go. When you finally get into that circle, especially your professional circle, try to remember that someone else is still outside looking in. Here are a few ways to give someone else a chance, because we can all use a little good karma:
- Promote other people’s links and awards, even the competition.
- If you’re at a conference talking to a group and you see someone standing outside the circle with that awkward look of faux participation, invite them in.
- Make an introduction to help someone’s career along.
- If someone is new to blogging, comment, subscribe, or even link to them.
- When someone challenges you publicly, listen and think before you counterattack.
- Don’t envy other people’s success – learn from it and improve.
- Every once in a while, shut up and listen.
At the end of the day, those of us who have attained some measure of success need to remember that we all had a little help along the way. Try to return the favor once in a while.
Photo licensed from iStockPhoto.com (Photographer: Hélène Vallée)