Dynamoo - 11:22 pm on Nov 24, 2005 (gmt 0)

I remember a couple of years back when the ODP was basically brought to its knees by over-agressive scrapers and crawlers. Not sure how it got fixed, but it did.

We're not seeing the picture that Brett sees.. I think we should trust his judgement on this one. Sure, the missing site search is a PITA but I'm sure we'll all cope. Although personally I would monetise the site more and then invest in the biggest servers I could lay my hands on.

You know though, I've always found that as a site GROWS then then the average VALUE of the visitor decreases (either in terms of revenue or other value.) Look at the threads about the last Google update if you want to see what the signal/noise problem is like. So perhaps this (temporary) change will help to refocus things a little.

As a site note, keep an eye on the Alexa stats. For a busy site like this they'll be fairly accurate. Sure, there's a dip today but then I understand it's this "Thanksgiving" holiday the Americans like so much.

And a final thought.. this is perhaps an experiment that none of us would want to try ourselves - it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.