The Internet sucks

[viralvideowall]

Starting a new blog and am already getting spam comments. Like this little gem below. I think I'd take the good ol' 1995 days of the web over the crap we have now. Anyone miss the 90's?


"Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is not that great, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO? First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear..."

[J_RaD]

yes I do.

[johnhh]

With you on that one - anything up to 1999. Bring back Duran Duran, or was that the 80's I forget as I am old.

[lucy24]

Does that mean I have to miss being on AOL dialup?

!
Oh, wait. That reminds me of a question that's been nagging at me for ages. During part of the 90's I was vaguely connected with academia. Or was it the 1890's? I forget.

Anyway, professors back then were just starting to have personal www pages. Generally with a squiggle ~ in front of their name. And I am morally certain that if any of those professors got an e-mail from a stranger asking for permission to link to them, the reaction would be "wtf? Why are they asking me? What do I care?" After all, the only possible concern was bandwidth-- and if your pages are under the .edu umbrella you're not paying for that yourself. So the answer to the e-mail would be either "Sure, go ahead" or nothing at all, depending purely on how the individual professor felt about answering e-mail.

When did it change? How and when did academics become SEO-conscious?

[incrediBILL]

technically the internet doesn't suck, the self-absorbed spamming vandals suck

[wheel]

When did it change? How and when did academics become SEO-conscious?

Probably after the 10 million'th piece of spam asking for a link. Like everyone else unfortunately.

I guess if I was angry about anything on the web, it'd be how all the link spammers drove the price of links up almost beyond reason. But that's OK, it's just more competitive.

[g1smd]

What fun to have a page that was #1 in ~35 results (that's all there was on the topic!) on all searchengines in 1997.

Same search now returns 150 million results, ~149.99 million of which are junk.

[johnhh]

Does that mean I have to miss being on AOL dialup?

Oddly I cancelled mine a few months back. Just in case, backup, that of sort of thing.

Nightmare trying to cancel it. Indian call centre, and the guy actually confessed to telling lies. Still done in the end, after about 3 hours on the phone and getting a letter threating legal action as I hadn't paid. Um, no, I cancelled it.

Actually I miss the 90's, life was so much simplier and easier, in hindsight of course.

[wheel]

With high speed cellular, not much need for backup of most any type anymore. I'm seeing them advertise faster speed on my phone than I get through my DSL connection.

[lucy24]

And if you're browsing on your cell phone, no power on earth can force you to expand your browser window to 1600px. There's something wonderfully retro about designing for a 200x200 screen.

[onepointone]

Nightmare trying to cancel it. Indian call centre, and the guy actually confessed to telling lies. Still done in the end, after about 3 hours on the phone and getting a letter threating legal action as I hadn't paid.

I had the same aol experience back in '99. Some things never change i guess...

My guy suddenly became unable to understand english when I tried to cancel. I remember spelling out words for him: c-a-n-c-e-l. What fun.