Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
We had a very highly ranked jobs site banned from the Google index (it has since been reinstated, but still hasn't recovered 99% of its traffic) - and the reason Google gave for banning it was a statement on our homepage saying that we also offered "text links for sale". (I actually talked to a Google person on a plane when I vacationed in San Fran this fall, and that was her take on my ban). We always offered text links (since we are a job site), but Google apparently didn't like us advertising the fact that we did!
So .... if Google holds true to form, should we see some graying out of the PR on these pixel link farms and bans from the index in the next update or so, wouldn't you think?
Do you think they'll eventually be removed from the index, just like all the other link schemes? That would absolutely kill the popularity of these sites, IMO.
. I'd bet that he has only sold a couple of hundred thousand.
I sincerely doubt that...
Look at the links on there, and a low % are affiliate links.
But now it is obnoxious all the unintelligent morons that are spamming me to death with their knock-off sites.
Hey, I never expected any PR love; just thought the kid was smart enough to come with the idea.
Go Alex...you are a very smart kid.
You paid the guy to support his "genius"? Do you by any chance take part in pyramid schemes on the same logical basis?
The whole "idea" only works because he received press coverage. That drives traffic to a site that otherwise would receive absolutely none because it has absolutely nothing to offer users. Because the traffic now exists, there is a potential advertising market. This advertising is sold on the basis of the traffic the site is getting, but that is clearly *very* short term and about as untargetted as you can get. Comparing the effective CPC to Adwords is a pointless metric because no-one is going to buy anything, or view enough pages on your site to make the money back via CPM advertising or anything similar.
In a world of pointless websites, it sets a new standard. I only wish places like the BBC had seen it for what it was, an attempt to sell out their viewing audience, and not given it the coverage it required to be anything other than the stupid idea it always was.
Whatever! I'm a sucker for genious. So get over it.
I've spent much more stupid money in my life...but the kid had a great idea and now all the copycats are trying to duplicate it.
You paid the guy to support his "genius"?
Clearly $100 means a bit more to some than others, and cleverness a bit less.
Correlation? ;)
[edited by: jcoronella at 3:47 am (utc) on Dec. 2, 2005]
And, I bought the link way before he ever got press coverage...OK?
I don't care if it passes PR or anything else. Alex came up with a great idea and I liked it. End of story.
What's a $100...
Especially in the days of a Million bucks for 24hrs on MSN!
As advertisers we have to throw stupid money around in the hopes of striking the occassional hidden gem. $100 to throw a dart is a bargain.
While I'm not getting as much traffic as I hoped for, since I added Adsense tracking to my analytics on that test site this week, it shows a 10% click through from referels from Alex's site.
As another thread on here mentioned this week. Attracting dumb users yields more clicks than the super intelluctual.
genious
Seriously. What is it about the concept that makes this guy "genious"? I think that description is a bit dramatic.
I am fairly sure however much a lot of people loath his idea they can still put their hands up and agree that they would do the same thing given the opportunity...
For example, Joseph Beuys installed a work called "Fettecke" (fat corner) - some kilos of fat smeared into the corner of one of the exhibition rooms. After the closure of the exhibiton, one of the cleaning ladies removed the "work", explaining later that she thought it was dirt (and I agree with her).
See the similarities here - both the fat corner and the million dollar homepage are beautiful pieces of total uselessness, junk, yet cleverly arranged and put to a media hype (either through direct publicity or through the artists name). Art.
That guy is an artist.
There are pages that show random banners on each reload, so there are no stable link destination for Google to index, and no PR passing involved.
Here, we have no <a href=> links, but one big image map. Does Google follow image map links and grant PR for them? The natural answer would be 'yes', but I have seen many weird situations where Googlebot refused to follow links, so I tend to doubt it. Matt Cutts said the links are worthless for ranking - maybe because they are in image map?
And even if these links were seen and followed by Googlebot, what the benefit for ranking, if the page in question has no definite theme! The time of pure PageRank is gone, the benefit of anchor text is also likely to be depreciated, as you can easily manipulate it, while theme passing can be a future of Google algo.
So links from a good page about widgets (means: having unique content about widgets, having inbounds and outbounds from/to the best pages about widgets, listed in DMOZ in 'Widgets' category etc) would help in ranking for 'widgets' related keyphrases.
But what would help a link from page about nothing? Just PR - but PR doesn't mean so much now, and thousands of links from PR7 page can't carry that much. Perhaps each page will get enough pagerank to get from PR0 to PR1 or PR2, and as the scale is logarythmic, for PR3 pages and higher this benefit will be insignificant. I know cheaper ways to buy such small amounts of PageRank.
I dont know if anyone has looked but the links on the mdh are in the form...
<area onmouseover="d(this)" onmouseout="e(this)" shape="rect" coords="x,x,x,x" href="http://sub.widgets.ext" title="Widgets" target="_blank"/>
The question you have to ask here is assuming some search engines even bother to grab the URL how usful is it going to be anyway when it is chucked in the middle of an area tag with scripting, sure the URL is in plain text but its still not exactly a standard linking technique anyway...
As with most advertising the links on the page as far as SEO as Matt Cutts said are going to be virtually useless however again as with all advertising most people do it for the clicks rather than the SEO value. As a general rule most people dont use PPC for advertising for the sake of SEO although Overture listings are picked us as links by Google however that doesnt mean they carry any weight, after all the links go through an Overture proxy before they goto the target site.
Adverts = Clickthroughs, SEO = Search Result Clicks
They are different, the measure of value for SEO from this page is irrelevant...
link to WSJ story [online.wsj.com]
I would never have the gall to run a site like that but I can't argue with his income off it - that is if all the pixels are really paid for.
[edited by: amznVibe at 2:00 pm (utc) on Dec. 2, 2005]
Back to my original question, we have seen Google dropping not only link farms,link only pages, but many other other pages that don't meet some arbitrary criteria completely out of the index this year - not just a penalty, but a complete eradication. Can Google afford to play by these same rules with these million dollar pages? Interestingly enough, I don't think they will. The original page is getting a ton of media exposure, and when people go to Google, they are going to be dissapointed if search for it, and find that the pages are not in the index. It makes you question the accuracy of the search engine.
So.... what's so different about banning the other link farms and even the content rich sites that sell advertisements (links). We all have seen that happen in drastic measures at some point this year - esp. the Adsense-rich sites (you know what I'm talking about and so does Google). It is the same thing, just on a less public scale - but again it still makes the user question the legitimacy of a seach engine which bans (or censors) sites based on their own opinions of their content.
Am I off the mark with this?
n : misinformation that is deliberately disseminated in order to influence or confuse rivals (foreign enemies or business competitors etc.)
When a company has terms of service, user contracts, and publicly posted information, that is vague, and it facts skirts issues that throughout history, have been written in stone in b2b relalationships, when they do reveal 'secrets' you really have to wonder why.
Its a spam site offers nothing to the user and has no content or anything.
I don't think it counts as "spam" at all. I doubt the page ranks signficantly for anything other than searches related to pixel ads or other directly related terms such as the guy's name; both for which the site is a highly relevant result.
Plus the site wasnt optimised for SEO, Google or anyone else, its sites like this that make the web what it is, if every site was the same and had no spam or adverts I would personally get bored very quickly.
LOL it really makes me LOL when I read that Jagger primary target was the backlinks LOL and again LOL.
Give me a million blogs and guest books to spam out the world.Great Job Jagger ho ho ho like Santa said.
i don't get it.
I wouldn't say it's a link farm, though. I don't see a lot of manipulative anchor text there. It's really just a billboard that people are looking at. I am surprised that so many firms bought into it. I'd imagine the value of an add there to be nothing. Then again, I guess there is a coolness to bepart of a little history in the making... thousands of people posed nude for Spencer Tunick...
