Archive for the ‘Op / Ed’ Category
Google arrived on the scene in 1998 with all the exuberance and naivete of a grad student, not surprising given that its creators, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both graduate students when they first met at Stanford University.
Their collaboration on a 1996 project known as BackRub, (so named because backlinks were analyzed) became the search engine we all know as Google. By 1999 Google was no longer a beta engine and had moved from the garage to an office on University Avenue in Palo Alto.
The PageRank Citation System was indeed bringing order to the Web. Even as early as 1998 some thought was given to the impact that commercial interests would have on their search engine algorithm, as evidenced by the following quote,
“At worst, you can have manipulation in the form of buying advertisements (links) on important sites. But, this seems well under control since it costs money.” – From, Bringing Order To The Web -1998
That woefully short sighted observation should have been a warning to everyone that Google’s idealistic creators had no idea the impact their search engine would have on e-commerce, and that buying links, even in 1998, was a practice that Google’s creators frowned on.
Buying and selling links was a common practice in 1998. It was simply known as ‘advertising.’ In 2000, Google would launch their toolbar and this simple browser plugin would have as much of an impact on the Web as the search engine itself.
With the addition of the little green bar as an indicator of PageRank, Google had unwittingly supplied a tool to those that wanted to manipulate Google’s search engine results. Now the link merchants had an easy way of valuing the links they were selling and to those people that craved the #1 spot in the Google results, control now seemed to be in their hands. The longer the little green bar, the more green could be generated by both link sellers and webmasters.
Link exchange UCE (spam) quickly became a problem. Anyone and everyone with a website that had a decent PageRank value became the target of those wishing to buy, sell or trade links. Link farms sprang up all over the Web. Directories were created that took advantage of PageRank values as price points. By 2003 PageRank was seen as so important that the first lawsuit occurred over the perceived sale of it.
To help combat the problem, Google reduced the accuracy of their PageRank indicator to the point that it became useless. In 2003 however, Google launched a program known as Adsense and the Web is still reeling from the impact.
With the launch of Adsense it was now possible for anyone to make money on the Web. No need for a product, tax tables, shipping cost calculators, expensive shopping carts, no need for any confusing or low-paying affiliate program, all you needed was a website or blog and enough know-how to copy and paste a snippet of code.
With high payouts and such easy implementation, it wasn’t long before everyone wanted to cash in on the Adsense phenomenon. Unfortunately, not everyone wanted to take the time to create a worthwhile site. It was much easier to scrape content from other sites and places Adsense on the stolen content. To make matters worse, once someone is approved for Adsense, the code can be placed on any number of sites, with no review.
This fast and loose policy is directly responsible for the proliferation of ‘Made For Adsense’ sites, known as MFAs. Only one ingredient was missing for success with Adsense. Links. Even scraper sites need links and since the content is typically poor or worthless other webmasters won’t link to them. A solution was available however. Link spam, in the form of comments on blogs.
Automated programs seek out blogs and add a link to the target site in the form of a thinly disguised comment. The automation of comment spam became so bad the major search engines like Google and Yahoo banded together to find a solution. Their answer to the problem is known as ‘nofollow’. Place ‘nofollow’ on the links people add in their comments and the the target site receives no boost from the search engines.
As solutions go, nofollow is a poor one. People running the automated comment spam programs simply don’t care about nofollow. With billions of pages out there, they’ll find pages in which nofollow isn’t used. Real solutions, like Akismet, have proven much more effective.
While nofollow as a solution to comment spam has been largely ineffective, Google is now recommending its use for other purposes such as combatting the efficacy of paid links. Google wants to know which links to trust, and to Google, paid links simply aren’t trustworthy? Why? The answer is simple, paid links are effective. Buying links allows anyone to manipulate Google’s results. Which brings into question the continued viability of the citation-based ranking system that is crucial to Google’s success.
How is it possible to tell that paid links are effective? Because Matt Cutts, a Google engineer, wants people to report paid links. On the surface, that might not seem like such a bad thing, but the reality may be quite different.
Google’s citation-based system is falling apart in a world in which links are traded like commodities and Google wants control, not just control of their own results but control of other people’s websites. They’ve basically stated that paid links are bad for the Web unless they’re Google’s links. Anyone that thinks that Adsense ads, (paid links) don’t directly affect the search engine results doesn’t understand the impact that Adsense has had on the Web.
Links are the very essence of the Web, allowing Google to tell you how to link gives them with far too much power. If you want to follow Google’s advice, build your site for your visitors, not for the search engines, and that includes your links. If a paid link is beneficial to the user, so be it. Whether or not it was paid for should have no bearing on the issue.
If you think for a minute that Google cares about the user experience, think about this, Google allows Adsense to be placed on sites without regard to quality of content and they advise blending your ads to look like site navigation, a perfect example of deceiving the user. What their actions say is simply this, paid links are just fine, as long as Google is the one getting paid.
Link freely, link often, and let Google clean up their own mess.
If you don’t know the story of SCE to AUX, you’ve missed what might be one of NASA’s finest moments. During the Apollo 12 mission, 36 seconds after liftoff, the craft was struck by lightning. Astronaut Conrad said that “Almost every warning light that had anything to do with the electrical system was on”. Sixteen seconds later, another discharge struck the craft.
At mission control, John Aaron, a flight controller in charge of the electrical system, lost all the flight telemetry on his screen. Mission Control had mere seconds to decide whether or not to abort the mission. In the midst of the chaos around him, John Aaron remained calm and in control.
He had seen the exact same thing occur nearly a year before. In a clear voice he said, “Flight, try SCE to AUX”. Pete Conrad, the flight commander didn’t know what John Aaron meant. Neither did anyone at Mission Control. Alan Bean knew exactly where the switch was located and flipped it to the ‘AUX’ position. Telemetry was immediately restored.
It was John Aaron’s extensive experience that provided a solution to the problem. For years he had lived and breathed his job, consuming every bit of knowledge that might be relevant to the mission and the lives of the astronauts that he was responsible for.
And this story was my answer today to the client that called and wanted me to handle his PPC campaign. I told him he needed an expert. He said that he thought I could do it, or that maybe, he could do it. And I said, “Maybe, but an expert will know exactly when to try SCE to AUX”.
None of your goddamn business! I really tried to keep from finding out what Twitter was. I knew it was some sort of social network, but that was it. Then a friend called me and asked me if I ‘twittered’. I resisted the urge to hang up, I resisted the urge to drive over to his house to see if he traded in his pickup for a powder blue Miata. (guys just shouldn’t drive Miatas) I simply asked, “What”?
He explained what Twitter was. I remain unimpressed. Why do people think that other people are interested in every second of their lives? In essence, Twitter is a platform that connects voyeurs with exhibitionists. Really sad exhibitionists. People that want to share with the world what TV show they’re watching, or that they’re walking their dog.
Aren’t there other avenues to express mediocrity? Are people really interested in the boring minutiae of other people’s lives? Or are they simply so stone-bored themselves that any alternative to their sad lives is welcomed? Twitter is just creepy. Don’t ask me to ‘Twitter’, I might just punch you for being nosy, ya freak.
No, I’m not going to make you look up ‘ipsedixitism’. It means ‘unsupported assertions’ but ipsedixitism is a lot more interesting isn’t it?
I wasn’t following the Viacom v. Google lawsuit until I read something in a thread at Webmasterworld yesterday. It was this bit from Google’s Associate General Counsel, Alexander Macgillivray, “”We will never launch a product or acquire a company unless we are completely satisfied with its legal basis for operating,” Macgillivray told Reuters in an interview.” Well said, well said Mr. Macgillivray. It’s a perfect example of ipsedixitism.
Macgillivray must have a short memory. He seems to have completely forgotten about the European Gmail trademark case that Google lost.
While his memory may be bad, his aim isn’t. His words were a shot at Viacom. Legal posturing for the Viacom v. Google-owned YouTube copyright case.
I simply can’t figure out how Napster, which was P2P software, could lose in court, and Google could possibly win. That’s exactly what I think will happen though. Google will trample all over copyright law again, win in court, and effectively prove that nothing is fair and equal under the law. The uneasy, symbiotic relationship Google had with content creators is becoming ever more parasitic. If Google can walk all over Viacom, what will they do to you? What will they do with you when they no longer need you?
First, I’d like to apologize if you arrived at this entry assuming you were going to learn anything about SEO or marketing. If that’s the case, best click away to something else so you won’t feel the urge to complain about my bit of self-indulgence.
I had dinner with a very intelligent man and his equally intelligent wife this evening and the discussion ranged from politics, to religion, to evolution to global warming. All volatile subjects to be sure, often divisive even among the restrained.
While no violent arguments broke out at the table, on two separate occasions I voiced my difference of opinion on two separate subjects and was promptly told that, “I simply must read the book’. One of those books was An Inconvenient Truth and the other was The Development of Darwin’s Theory by Dov Ospovat.
I told him I had read the first but not the latter and was astonished when I was told, ‘Well then, you must not have understood it’. My rejoinder was that I certainly understood what the author meant for me to believe, but that I lacked the scholarship necessary to make determinations about the truth of what the author was saying.
Again, to my astonishment, I was told that, ‘They are scientists, at some point you have to trust someone’. At which point I promptly pissed him off because I replied, ‘Indeed I do, but that point, for me, requires more than reading a single book on the subject’.
He wasn’t angry enough to walk out on his drink and his crab legs but he was angry enough to begin an interrogation on the other subject, evolution. Not satisfied with my replies, he simply asked if I was a Creationist. When I said no he looked surprised and asked if I was just being difficult. I told him that I preferred Abrupt Appearance over evolution and creationism. He had no idea what that meant, so I supplied the essence of Abrupt Appearance with a single sentence.
The fossil record shows that separate and distinct species appear in their entirety, enjoy a period of stasis, and then vanish.
This served to confuse and anger him, and he nearly shouted,
‘What about those damn lizards that have lived in caves so long that they’ve gone blind’?
When I told him that he was now confusing adaptation with evolution the vein in his forehead began to throb and he excused himself and wife rather abruptly.
He didn’t stay around long enough to learn that I don’t disagree that global warming is occurring, just that I don’t believe scientists are as sure about the cause as they would have us believe, and that some of the ‘solutions’ to global warming simply don’t seem feasible.
He didn’t stay long enough to learn that even Darwin had some difficulty with parts of his theory, the ‘evolution’ of the eye being particularly difficult and symbiosis quite troubling.
He didn’t stay long enough to learn that I have an open mind on both subjects, but that I feel my knowledge is incomplete so I typically have more questions than answers.
He didn’t stay, because he read a couple of books and felt secure in his knowledge. Not to say that I don’t feel that you can’t learn from a book, but if you’ve run out of questions, you haven’t read enough of them.
I always have to question the mental integrity, not the acuity, of someone that is swayed by reading a single book. If an opinion is that easily swayed it must have been loosely held and what does that say about the value of the original opinion? It is so easy for our reach to exceed our grasp that we sometimes forget how much we don’t know.
About half an hour after I arrived home, he called to apologize about his abrupt disappearance, told me he had a trying day and that he was ordering some material on Abrupt Appearance. I promised to read The Development of Darwin’s Theory …
Gunning-Fog 12.2 What’s this? Just an experiment, move along now…
First, I’d just like to be clear about how I feel about librarians seeking to censor books, any books. Librarians that take any action to censor a book should be fired, immediately, as soon as proof is offered that they tried to censor a book. The last thing I want is for librarians to decide what can be read by whom.
The book at the root of this current controversy? The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, a Newberry Medal winner. The book is about a girl coming to terms with herself, life and growing up. I read it and there’s absolutely no reason to ban it. So why are librarians so upset? Here in all its shameful glory is the offending passage:
Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.
“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”
Oh no! Not scrotum! How dare the author put such an offensive word in a child’s book? Well maybe because the author doesn’t have the sensibilities of a neutered Puritan looking for a witch to drown.
Can ten year-old children handle the word scrotum? Of course, so why can’t the librarians? How did the world become so twisted that a mere word describing a body part can be considered offensive? Dangerous even? Read the full story in the NY Times.
Now please excuse me while I storm about my office then contact some more people that have the sack to stand up to those folks that can’t stomach a perfectly good word like ‘scrotum’.
Oh, if you’re wondering what that word is that describes something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much, it’s sputum.
Will unplugging be the next form of teen rebellion? Will “Turn on, tune in, drop out” be replaced by ‘Turn off, tune out and unplug? Are teens already wise to the fact that the Internet is ‘the man’? In a world in which video surveillance is omnipresent where is a teen supposed to get a little privacy? Where are adults supposed to get any privacy? Is the Google Borg for real? Is GPS and Google maps the realization of Big Brother?
Teens might think so. From New Scientist:
Imagine that Debbie and me somehow go out together. We want to network with our peer group, teenager-wise. I need to figure out what’s hip and with-it and rebellious, and Debbie needs to know what the other cyber-Goth chicks are wearing. Is that okay? No!
It’s not that we can’t do it: it’s that all our social relations have been reified with a clunky intensity. They’re digitized! And the networking hardware and software that pervasively surround us are built and owned by evil, old, rich corporate people! Social-networking systems aren’t teenagers! These machines are METHODICALLY KILLING OUR SOULS! If you don’t count wall-graffiti (good old spray paint), we have no means to spontaneously express ourselves. We can’t “find ourselves” – the market’s already found us and filled us with map pins.
At our local mall, events-management sub-engines emit floods of locative data. So if Debbie and me sneak in there, looking for some private place to get horizontal, all the vidcams swivel our way. Then a rent-a-cop shows up. What next? Should we go to Lovers’ Lane? There aren’t any! They eliminated all those! They were tracked down with satellites and abolished with Google Maps.
I have to admit that if my parents had given me a cellphone with GPS tracking ability when I was 14, the phone would have quickly found its way into the nearest creek or big blue dumpster.
We teenagers have to live in “controlled spaces”. Radio-frequency ID tags, real-time locative systems, global positioning systems, smart doorways, security videocams. They “protect” us kids, from imaginary satanic drug dealer terrorist mafia predators. We’re “secured”. We’re juvenile delinquents with always-on cellphone nannies in our pockets. There’s no way to turn them off. The internet was designed without an off-switch.
Have we gotten so caught up in protecting the children that we’ve forgotten to teach them how to protect themselves? Are we trying to turn the world into a giant nanny? A nanny that consists of lenses, tracking devices and lines of code?
Will the wired and wireless generations yearn to unplug or is it too late?
From agenda to vendetta–
I’d like to try and out the advertisers and marketing firms on digg (and maybe even Netscape, who knows) that are paying folks to submit news for them. If you know of a firm doing this send me their name, the email they sent you, the URL of the story on digg/netscape, and/or who they are paying.
If your tip pans out I’ll send you $100 via paypal. Yep, I’ll pay you for ratting these folks out.
Anonymous tips that are purchased? That wouldn’t lead anyone to question the credibility of the information would it? Shades of Hoover and McCarthy. The sad part is, for $100, he’ll find people willing to help him. The good news is, the FTC is already asking for disclosure.
I’m all for disclosure. Credibility on the Web is under attack. False headlines, fake reviews, fake sites. But compiling a secret list, and paying people to help compile the list, is not the way to establish trust. This just smacks of a personal crusade.
But it gets worse, Calacanis acknowledges that he hasn’t confirmed the facts, but he publishes an ‘outing’ anyway, and casts his uncomfirmed suspicion on a list of people that ‘dugg’ the story.
I’m a country boy, and the first thing I think of when someone mentions ‘bait’ is ‘trap’. That’s exactly what linkbait has become. The lure for a trap. Sensationalist headlines crafted for the sole purpose of luring readers into a story that is either devoid of truth or a story that contains a mere hint of truth.
Headlines like this: Google Funding Al Qaeda and Hezbollah Terrorist Groups
Note the question mark at the end of that headline. That question mark serves two purposes. It forces the reader to ask, ‘hmm, are they’? And it alleviates any journalistic responsibility on the part of the author. Now the author is free to simply question the plausibility of the headline rather than present citations and factual evidence. Mind-boggling leaps of imagination are now possible.
Matt Cutts Devours Babies?
Graywolf Embroiled in Bitter Controversy With Ted Leonsis?
Cubs Win The World Series?
There’s a price to be paid for baiting your readers. While the short-term goal of obtaining more links may be met, the long-term goal of gaining your readers’ trust is damaged.
I’ve noticed that the SEJ headline has been changed. At 1:53 PM CST TechMeme still carries the orginal headline.
Robert Scoble is upset. He’s upset because a website that has negative things to say about Martin Luther King Jr. has the #1 spot in Google. He feels that this is an error, or a deliberate Google Bomb by the owners of MartinLutherKing.org. In order to rectify that error, he wants people to help him link bomb Google.
Naturally, people want to do the right thing. So, they want to exploit the system that they feel has been exploited by MartinLutherKing.org. This is where I feel that the mob mentality takes over, and no good will come of it. If the system is broken, the system needs to be fixed, not exploited further. Adding more bombs to the fray is a knee-jerk reaction typical of activists that simply want to triumph over their enemy. It is also the cheap and easy way out. So here’s a novel approach, rather than simply exploit the system, how about working within the system to effect change?
Create the best resource on the Web, entirely devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. and promote it. Or work with the existing site owners to help them promote their sites without resorting to Google bombs. Martin Luther King Jr. was a master of working within the system to effect change. That is how lasting changes are made. The bombing method simply ensures that someone will begin working on a bigger bomb…
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