543 karma · joined November 13, 2009
You are the one who attacked people. We are simply tracking how well you performed in your efforts.
Hold yourself to your own standards or close your mouth. Period.
And at the higher level they absolutely do penalize people individually to send a message. Watch the opening of this video if you think otherwise http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-07-08-n14.html
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007053
As an extension of that, sites which get most of their traffic from search often have the highest ad CPM values because the ad targeting is so relevant on the AdSense ads. And this is true even moreso now that Google is also using the referrer for ad targeting
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/better-contextual-matchi...
Scraper sites do quite well on the ad revenues front because most of the traffic is search driven, and because the content ends up so bad that the ads look all the more appealing.
Does that mean that (for the remaining pages on the site)...
a.) the other scraped content which exists on the remaining pages will be put in an iframe (rather than as text on the page)
- OR -
b.) that you will be removing nofollow from the pages you are scraping content from?
Either you trust the content enough that you should link to it directly, or you should put it in an iframe such that search engines don't see it. Either route would likely be more akin to fair use than what you are currently doing (automatically scraping 3rd party content into your pages and using it to rank against the content creators, without permission, and without a way of opting out).
Likeso http://tinyurl.com/ydyo3ud
Ah, so now you admit it was intentional. But good on you for (eventually? hopefully?) fixing it.
- 2. they don't get traffic is my point... we look at any page that gets over 100 page views in a month and we build those pages out. so, even if you find a page that ranks it will not have traffic. if it has traffic it gets built out.
If a person has a quarter million pages that are getting 5 visits each that is still a lot of traffic. Especially when the page has 0 editorial costs.
- 3. we are not scraping, we are using search APIs
The end result is what people would typically call a "scrapper site". It is irrelevant how it is created (if you scrape directly or syndicate from somewhere else that is scraping). The issue is a lack of editorial control (see your page about 13 year old rape) and a lack of citing sources with links.
- 4. i dont understand this issue of our widgets (which don't get used to be honest.. it's a failed program)
Search engines have duplicate content filters. If the content is within the page as HTML (as you do on Mahalo) then you can often outrank the original source for their own content. You bypass this issue and me mentioning it if you only use an iframe to embed the content in your pages. But if you embed it directly into the HTML (as you are doing right now) then of course it is bogus.
- 5. this is simply false... our traffic comes from how to articles, walkthroughs and Q&A. if you want to know what the top 10 pages are they are things like how to play guitar and call of duty walkthrough pages. those things are 3-5k words!
I am not talking about your top 10 pages. I am talking about the bottom 300,000 pages, which in aggregate get far more traffic than the top 10 pages do. :D
- just lay off dude... go troll someone else.
Not trolling at all. Just trying to give you valuable feedback, as you have claimed it to be publicly multiple times (unless you were lying when you stated that) :D
- If you don't want those pages indexed in Google then why are you submitting them in an XML sitemap?
- I have already shown examples of the 0 original content pages ranking, so how can you claim that they do not rank?
- You are not scraping directly, you are pulling from 3rd party sites and using it as content on your own site. Which is worse, because there is no way to opt out of it.
- My problem is not just with what you call stub pages, but with most of your pages. When you give people embed code to embed your content in their site you give them an iframe AND a direct link back to you. If you want me to stop highlighting the absurdity of it then perhaps you should hold yourself to the same standards as what you offer others. But you do just the opposite when you embed 3rd party content in your site. You slap a nofollow on the links and embed the content directly into the page (rather than in an iframe).
- Worth noting that every time I mention the above point you end up talking about stub pages or experiments or some other strategy to try to redirect attention. But in reality, what I am talking about is what you do on almost every page of your website.
Absolutely right. They care about brand.
If you look at the content (and I don't mean the top 100 guides, but the hundreds of thousands of backfill pages) most of it is nothing without being part of some branded collection (leveraging Google's authority site loophole). And thus protecting their brand is crucial to protecting their livelihoods.
If a scraper site is branded as a scraper then it falls out of Google's good graces. And without that traffic the site loses probably over 50% of its revenue.
But if they removed the scraped content they lose a huge chunk of revenues as well (if I had to guess I would say at least 25% to 30%...and it is the all margin piece of their business).
I think the only longterm solution is some sort of editorial curation and removing nofollow from the links.
Sure it will increase costs in the short term, but in the longterm it increases the value of their operation significantly. And it sets up a huge competitive barrier between them and other would be semi-legit to illegitimate scraper sites.
+1 ... Preach on!!!
The only reason there an (alleged) need for nofollow is because they are scraping tons of content & displaying it without any editorial curation.
If they actually were a human powered search (as they falsely claim to be) and did editorial review of the links then why would they need to add nofollow to links that passed their editorial guidelines?
Further lets not forget that in the past Mahalo did provide direct outbound links. 18 months ago I predicted them adding nofollow at some point, Jason stopped by with what he called a "fact check" ... and then they later added nofollow...pretty funny! http://www.seobook.com/when-will-mahalo-add-nofollow-outboun...
And keep in mind Squidoo was not automating and scraping on the scale that Mahalo is today. So Mahalo is far worse.
If that was actually true then perhaps you would have more full time in-house editorial staff (instead of canning them all). If that was actually true then perhaps I wouldn't see any of your scraped pages ranking in the search results. If that was actually true then you wouldn't be scraping 3rd party content into almost all your pages.
But its not true...and so we are back at the beginning again.
Are throw away comments used as the core marketing and public relations strategies for a new company?
Just because you are hoping that people have short memories does not mean you can change reality.
Lets see what Jason called Youtube http://calacanis.com/2006/05/11/how-youtube-won-great-seo-st... "How YouTube Won: Great SEO + Stolen Content (or the biggest hit and run in the history of the Internet)"
And yet when Jason takes your content and wraps it in Mahalo that is somehow legitimate. hmm. double standard, eh?
That is not an area where I taught you anything...it was one you discovered on your own, while analyzing Youtube.
The other thing you mentioned about YouTube was "If YouTube makes $250M from a sale their founders and VCs should give $225M of it back to the content owners like NBC and Loren Michaels who they stole it from!"
And I do hope you hold yourself to your own standards. Though if history is any guide :(
Maybe not quite at the Matt Cutts level...but nonetheless way way way up there...like at least in the top 0.01%.
I bet (with at least 99:1 odds) the number is closer to 0 than it is to 10 when you back out the ~ 100 contractors around the world.
So then what is really human powered about the Mahalo scraper site?
I also bet Jason is surprised at how much I know about his business model. :D
When you back out the VC influx of cash I am not so sure. :D
I think you are great at public relations, but I didn't have to flame people or take funding to build huge traffic streams.
I started out with lots of debt, no revenues, and a credit card and grew from there. And I only have ~ 6.5 years online...imagine my public relations Qi I will develop by the time I am a ripe old man like yourself :D
I mean...you're like 40!!!
And time and again you have had scraper pages wind up in the search results against the search engine guidelines with various excuses each time. On those types of pages Google states "Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content." so no...those are not at all within the guidelines (or even the spirit of the guidelines).
Syndicating content without asking permission and providing no way to opt out and putting nofollow on the links is also a quite dirty business practice.
Keep in mind that scraper sites are not something you learned from me. If someone like me puts up a site like that it is burned almost immediately. Whereas your site has been scraping content for years. (I have never ran any scraper sites, but when Teeceo did what you are doing Matt Cutts described it as "shoot on sight" publicly on his blog)
Big difference.
The issue was that along with...
- calling the entire industry scum to pull in attention
- going out of his way to flam Squidoo as a spam site until he got them penalized
- creating something far spammier and far more automated than Squidoo
When you add it all together it is pretty bad.
flamed Squidoo in the mainstream press so often that he got them penalized http://searchengineland.com/search-spam-fight-mahalo-1-squid... (all so he could promote Mahalo)
....
fast forward the clock a couple years and Jason is operating well outside of Google's guidelines, massively auto-generating scraped content web pages. The auto-generating scraped pages are far worse than anything Squidoo ever did.
Jason publicly claims an ignorance of SEO to act like he doesn't know any better, then inside his corporate sales material the key selling point is SEO.
How can he both be ignorant of SEO and use it as his key selling point?
It shows is public claims of ignorance toward SEO are (at best) dishonest.
keep in mind all of your content is creative commons licensed...so if you keep up your scrape and nofollow attribution game, you are going to be in for some surprises where you feel the effects of what you are doing onto others.
your choice...either fix the nofollow anti-attribution issue yourself or have the market fix it for you.
I am just calling a spade a spade.
I have never met the guy in person...I just think he should hold himself to a higher standard if he is going to trash an entire industry he should educate himself on best practices within it rather than claiming ignorance while building a deceptive business model.
This is like Tiger Words claiming he desired privacy for his family deeds (after he had went outside his own family). if you want the public relations when you are hyping your own company and/or trashing other people's livelihoods then you accept the greater responsibility.
you can't just choose to take all the benefit and fall back on that <em>I am no expert</em> crap when you get caught in a lie.
"if he apologizes for saying something and backtracks"
That is the big problem. The apology is insincere.
He is not doing any real backtracking or shifting of strategy...just repeating a fake apology WITHOUT addressing the issues that were brought up.
MOST CRUCIALLY putting nofollow on the links to the sites he is "borrowing" content from.
Well I am still in the same company I was back when you call my industry scum (while you were selling links to shady casinos). As far as I am concerned your opportunistic jumps between companies are all part of the same general trend / strategy. You still have not changed as a person.
"i was wrong when i said it was bullshit and I have said that it was an off the cuff, uninformed statement many times."
Yes but the difference is you stand on a podium at conferences and yell to the press when you slag it off.
When you say it has value you do it on a twitter post or a quick blog post that does not even hit your homepage. You are not quite as loud in this case.
I would say to make it right you should probably need to (at a minimum)...
- Direct link out to the sites you are scraping content from. FIX THE ISSUE.
- Make an in-depth post on your blog highlighting how important SEO is to all web based businesses. Describe how you gamed social media sites and worked media and nepotistic angles to build links for Mahalo. Also describe the bait and switch public relations and attack bait angles you used to build links. Better yet...make this an in-depth case study!
- Make sure a copy of that post lands in the inboxes of your media email list and your Jason email list.
- Issue a press release announcing the above blog post.
If you do all of those then there is a pretty strong chance I will think your apology is sincere. Anything less and I will realize that this is once more another round of posturing.
Scraping 3rd party content (without permission) and then putting nofollow on the links is bogus.
But you keep avoiding that issue because you realize what you are doing, and your goal is to cash in on others content for as long as you possibly can.
Nice diversion attempt though!
Let me know how many need to be listed for you to see the patern, and I will prove you factually incorrect once more.