What is Digg?17 Comments
- lava, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I didn't know Google was broken
- madk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Google works fine for my sites. Content is king!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12gotta love guys who think they know how to fix the most successful company on the planet.
and it's blogspam to boot. - Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I've seen plenty without any comments... but I'll agree that the article itself needs some proof reading.
- smackhero, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5this guy's blog is worthless and offers barely any analysis of the issues he mentions. i seriously hate SEO "consultants" or "experts." they're just like spammers, except they've managed to create an industry out of degrading the quality of the web and destroying the usefulness of search engines while somehow retaining legitimacy in the business world due to the greed and myopic nature of many businesses.
it's not hard to optimize a site for search engines. it does not require a dedicated profession to be fairly ranked on google. basic search engine optimization is something that all web developers/designers should already know. as long as you don't use frames that screw up search engine indexing, use meta tags appropriately, title your pages correctly, and make use of nofollow/noindex/robots.txt, google will do the rest. in fact, google's indexing system works best if people don't try to manipulate their ranking and game the system. if SEO douchebags didn't exist, search results wouldn't be filled with spam pages containing no content, just ads.
people don't realize that when they pay SEO companies for their services, they are contributing to a negative web trend that hurts all web users and website owners. businesses pay for these services because they feel that they need them in order to compete, but SEO is a solution to a problem that their industry created. if companies just stop giving in to this scam, the search engines would take care of the problem themselves. when companies buy into the fake legitimacy that SEO companies claim, they just make google's job of ranking sites fairly and providing relevant results that much harder.
everyone thinks that they're getting an edge on the competition by adopting these questionable practices, but since their competition is doing the same things to manipulate the system, everyone's back where they started--except they've incurred the extra cost of using SEO services. and now sites with actual content get ranked behind commercial sites that are just trying to sell stuff (and focus on SEO rather than providing good content/services), and it becomes much more difficult for web users to find information or do research on the web.
this guy bitches about google encouraging people to report sites that manipulate the search index because it would, in effect, destroy his scummy profession. after all, if legitimate businesses and site owners stopped using SEO services (as using them result in being de-listed), then search engine would naturally return more relevant results, and people would realize that providing good content that people want or services with value to users is ultimately what drives traffic, not scams like SEO or spamming.
web users/site owners need to realize that they are part of a global online community. like any other community, the quality of the web is determined by the effort we as members of the community put into maintaining its quality. it requires mutual cooperation recognizing our shared interests and a strong sense of community and civic duty
the nature of spam/search ranking abuse is such that their power and profitability lies in the people who play into the scam--people who click on spam and buy stuff from spam sites, as well as businesses that pay for these services to try to gain a competitive edge. if everyone used the "report spam" button in gmail more often, the collective filtering power of the gmail user base would make spamming gmail accounts impractical and useless. similarly, if site owners collectively began using the system google has provided to report abuse instead of employing the same unethical tactics, it would get rid of the problem much faster. fewer abusers means google would be able to focus on and catch the sites that employ SEO techniques, and SEO services wouldn't be perceived as needed in order to be ranked fairly. - skored, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I really hope you're all kidding about the paid diggs - that would be a shame. If someone paid for diggs - noone let me know :) In all seriousness this is one of my favorite sites and this series has some really great info in it but I don't think English is the author's primary language.
- deadA1ias, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Since when does a digg entry make it to the front page with just 3 comments?
BTW, the standard of the English used in the article is shocking. Definitely one to skim read. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The only thing I would love to change in Google is to calculate the number of paid ads and decrease ranking accordingly.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google is experimenting with a new look - check it out here - http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_s_New_Look_Pic
- johnseth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0SOME proof reading.... That's like saying the desert needs SOME rain.
- Sluz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1One of my favorite sites as well. Christian is European so he does need some proofreading but he's very smart and worth reading.
- bobothn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I agree I buried as lame. Some guy running a two bit blog is going to tell google what they are doing wrong. just because you blog spam is not ranked as high as you want it to be doesn't mean google is broken it means you need to get better content.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2"I really hope you're all kidding about the paid diggs - that would be a shame. If someone paid for diggs"
IIRC there are even companies that provide "digg" services, so go figure. People who think digg is a fair game and every site with good info has a fair chance should wake up. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Simple. bring standards and regulations to the web search engine industry. Everything else feels the need to be standardized and regulated yet Google is a search engine monopoly sorting the web according to their own policies and criteria which allows things to become lost or "unfindable" if Google feels slighted in any way. If Google's policies suddenly cause your website to become delisted from searches Google turns a deaf ear in your direction. They are too big to care about whether some guy's website looses top ranking because Google's oft erroneous algorithms arbritrarily decided the site was spam. They also don't have to answer to anyone else but their own supposed "Do no evil" policies. The problem is that Google decides what is evil or not, and what they do is always defined as no-evil.
Should someone have to pay to have their page ranked high? Lets put it this way, I see more sponsored links that are spam. In fact, despite all of Google's efforts, I see more spam listed in most searches then valued content simply because they pay Google to get there. In fact, the first search engine standard should be to eliminate paid ranking altogether, let the merits and quality of the site and popularity determine if it should be listed first in a set of results, not because someone paid Google more money then another person. If more people go to an anti-whatever website then the whatever website, then the anti-whatever website should be listed first, period, not because the whatever website paid Google lots of money to appear first. Google got rich by taking bribes and using extortion to sort the web, period.
So yes, there is something broken with Google, they are operating in an non-regulated industry in which they set the rules. Microsoft got slammed for that, its time to take down another giant a few notches. - redmond007, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5I just dugg this.
When can you guys paypal me? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+553 diggs & no comments?
I smell paid diggs.
Reported.
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