Forum Moderators: open
I think that it is time for mandatory search engine registration before listing.
The system could work as follows:
- Email address of registering site should be tagged to a whois if possible.
- Full name, offline contact info that matches domain owner via whois.
- Exceptions where email doesn't match domain could be handled via snail or some other system.
- Maybe a small fee for registration to cover se's extra expense.
Benefits for Search Engines:
- They will work with known users/entities/sites. That holds a certain amount of power to prevent spamming.
- Name branding via the extra information, extra time spent on site, and long term customer contact. Webmasters are the most overlooked demographic se's have.
- A powerful vehicle to do customer surveys and demo/pscho graphic profiling.
- A possible source of income via a small fee for site registration. (no guarantee's on any rankings or spidering, just a small amount to cover the administrative costs of such a registration system). I would be willing to pay a one time registration fee, just to make sure my site gets in the hopper and on the "clean site list".
- A checkbox on the signup, "are you cloaking"?
- Possible self site categorization (like excite tries to do) on signup. It could lead to higher relevance for the search engines.
- Copyright and intellectual property violation prevention. If you give the SE permission to spider, there can never be an issue.
- The ability to dig into user submitted dynamic database content that is being overlooked by other se's mostly due to copyright concerns.
Benefits for websites:
- We know the se's know who we are and have a possible source of contact via a customer service rep presented when we signed up.
- Knowing that the se's know we are playing the game by the rules - and so is everyone else.
- Page jacking prevention. Maybe put our "se registration site code" in a meta tag or on the page. If that code ever shows up on someone elses site that is registered with the engine that doesn't match our registered domain - it could raise some red flags at the se's (needs more thought).
Overall benefits for the public, sites, and search engines alike:
- Spam control. Once se's know who people are, if you register 20-30 domains with an se, are you going to spam them and risk all 30?
Bottom line, Relevance.
"Webmasters are the most overlooked demographic se's have."
Now that type of conformation to a system, makes some sense... Those of us that serve up IP delivery, but do it by the rules, still win, and the SE's get rid of a lot of "glut", and useless unrelevant content, taking up disk space.....
Now if you can get one SE to open up to the idea, you might start the ball rolling.....
>>>There's another one of those little sentences:
Mark, I hope you are collecting those, they may be valuable someday, to us anywhay...
Steve
"Webmasters are the most overlooked demographic se's have."
Damn, I though I was the only SE that had a focus on that. Now every SE can come here and read it. I was hoping to keep that one for ourselves ;)
My gut tells me a system like this must make a provision/exception for newbie webmasters struggling to learn HTML and metetags and... entreprenuers, maybe one or a handful of people struggling to get a business going or to market an already existing business, or to just get a community started.
Much of the growth of the Internet results from being able to find information and like minded people NO MATTER WHAT YOUR INTERESTS MAY BE. Examples are this forum, Marcia's craft sites, Usenet, IRC, and on and on and on....
If we set the bar too high for people to get into SEs, who knows how many useful (to someone at least) sites will be excluded and die from neglect?
If someone can clarify this idea, perhaps present it better, I'd welcome your help.
I think you're looking for something like this is a barrier to entry in what is an open industry that is pretty much unregulated as far as putting up a website. Heck it doesn't even cost anythng as there are all those free hosts out there.
I'm sure you'd hear cries from privacy advocates etc. about the "unlawfulness" of requiring this information to be submitted. Most people aren't even aware of all the "spying" that occurs daily in the e-world.
Just playing Devil's advocate here. I think it's an idea worth exploring, but there would be a lot of opposition to this plan from all directions (advocates, webmasters, free speechers, you name it).
I am building a directory for a specific market and want to ensure that people submitting information about a site and the related company are actually authorised to do so by that company. Problem...
On a general scope,
>>Now if you can get one SE to open up to the idea, you might start the ball rolling.....
NBCi does this already. You have to register before you can submit a site, albeit they are simply registering a user/member, not a "website specialist" . Then you can submit as many sites as you wish under the one registration.
I like the idea though of webmasters registering as an entity and then submitting multiple sites. In my experience I am submitting sites that don't belong to me (I worked on them), and so any linking of my information as the submitter and the whois for the site cannot happen.
>provision/exception for newbie webmasters
Perhaps it could be that you don't have to register, but priority would be giver, both spidering and search results, if you do. That way the newbies still have a chance whilst the professionals can receive professional treatment.
Registration Fee?? I would have thought that any costs incurred would be more than covered by the savings in being able to reduce the costs involved in spam identification. But I am not adverse to a reasonable fee.
Great Thread
Onya
Woz
Registration must not be a barrier to entry in what is an open industry that is pretty much unregulated as far as putting up a website.
That's what I was trying to say in earlier post.
>Perhaps it could be that you don't have to register, but priority would be giver, both spidering and search results...
And Woz offered an excellent solution!
