First Impressions of Google+

Everyone knows that first impressions are vital, so how did Google+ do? WebProNews posed this question to numerous search and social media leaders and received a variety of responses. Loren Baker, the Vice President of Services at BlueGlass, told us that Google+ felt like a “private version of Facebook” but with a better user interface. He also pointed out that it had given people the ability to “reset” as far as selecting who to include in circles and who not to include.

When Facebook opened to the general public, most users tried to get as many friends as possible regardless of whether a relationship existed or not. Baker believes that people have gotten smarter now and are using Google+ more selectively.

Social media speaker and author Mari Smith added that there seemed to be a “different vibe inside Google+” since users were sharing more and having “more thoughtful conversation.”

One interesting aspect that Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, noticed was that it appeared to be a big traffic driver. What’s even more interesting is that the amount of time that users spent on his site to read the post he had shared was 4 times the amount that people were staying when they came from Facebook or Twitter. He said that this data was especially noteworthy since Facebook and Twitter were usually strong sources of quality traffic.

Google Makes Progress in Social

Although Google has struggled to get into the social space, Google+ appears to be its golden ticket. As many people have pointed out, the platform looks very similar to Facebook and has similar sharing aspects as well. However, it seems to flow more like Twitter.

At this point, it looks like Google+ is trying to re-produce the features that users favor on the other networks, expand on them somewhat, and also capitalize on their shortcomings. Steve Rubel, the EVP of Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman, told us that these developments have created a different type of social experience that is peaking the interest of users.

“This is their first entry that they’ve had that is really serious [and] that people are really using a lot,” he said. “It’s a very open approach that I wish others would take.”

On the other hand, Li Evans, the CEO and Co-founder of LiBeck Integrated Marketing, told us that, while Google+ is a better attempt at social than its previous efforts, its value proposition is still lacking.

“What is the value proposition? What do I get from Google+?” she asked.

She went on to say that, at this point, she did not see the same value on Google+ that she sees in Facebook and LinkedIn.

Google+ Vs. Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter

Because of the positive feedback that the platform has gotten, it is only natural that people are questioning how Google+ will faceoff against the other social networks. Tech analyst Rob Enderle recently told us that Facebook had an advantage over Google+ since it had the majority of users.

But, as we all know, Myspace was the biggest social network when Facebook began. Enderle indicated that, if Facebook wasn’t careful, it could fall to Google+, just as Myspace did to it.

While Barry Schwartz, the CEO of RustyBrick, speaks very highly of Google+, he doesn’t think that Facebook has anything to worry about.

“I don’t think Google+ will kill Facebook going forward, I think, Facebook will still be very strong… probably the strongest player in that market,” he said.

Rubel doesn’t see Facebook dying to Google+ either. He thinks it has promise but said he had some doubts too.

“There’s no doubt that it’s going to be a strong #3 or #4,” said Rubel. “Whether it goes mainstream… the jury’s out. I don’t see that happening so fast.”

Smith also agreed that Facebook should not be worried about Google+. She did, however, say that, while it would always be an important player, she could see Facebook losing its #1 spot in the social space.

“If Facebook could just launch a powerful search engine, it would be fierce competition right back at ya for Google,” she said.

She went to say that Twitter, even though it needed improvements, was also a valuable product that would not likely fall to Google+.

Odden believes that Twitter is very effective as well for both business and personal usage. He explained to us that the propagation that happens on Twitter is very different that the closed environment of Google+

“Google+ is all about Google,” he said. “It’s not about propagating externally so much, whereas Twitter, is completely wide open.”

He did add that, if Twitter and Facebook were smart, they would find ways to work with Google+.

Incidentally, Facebook has seemingly responded to Google+ with its group chat release and video chat feature. It also announced a new page called Facebook for Business, which some believe was to counter Google’s shut down of business accounts.

When Google+ does roll out its business option, Baker told us that he could see it having a “competitive advantage” over Facebook if it incorporates Google products such as Deals, Latitude, and Places. He also said that if Google+ is fully integrated into mobile devices and Android, it could have the same penetration that Gmail has. Since Android dominates the mobile market, he thinks that Google+ has the potential to grow exponentially.

Wishlist of Further Development

Despite its extensive growth rate, Google+ has had its problems in its short existence. There have been privacy concerns in regards to user names, and there was also disappointment that the service launched without support for many Google Apps. The lack of business product was, of course, another basis for complaint.

So, what else would people like to see from Google+? Baker told us that he has had issues with Google+ since he has both a personal Gmail account and an apps Gmail account. For this reason, he would like for Google to converge the two accounts together.

On the topic of search, he said he would like more integration of Google+ into the search results. He suggested that Google cater search results based on each users’ Circles.

Evans and Odden both told us they would like to see more sharing capabilities. Rubel also said that the mobile experience has to improve. He would  like to have Hangouts move beyond 10 people as well.

Smith believes that Sparks needs a lot of work. Additionally, she wants Google to allow developers to have access to its API in order to create tools and other features on top of the platform.

Odden said he understood that Google was trying to produce a product especially for businesses, but he thinks that, in the mean time, businesses should be allowed to have a profile. As he explained, Google could then give them a migration tool to transfer information, once a business option is available.

Google definitely has a ways to go, but it’s clear that the company is dedicated to Google+ and succeeding in the social space.

“Google has not said this is a fully baked product,” said Rubel. “They’ve said it’s a field trial patience is a virtue.”

While nobody ever claimed the site had gone through a full recovery, we had seen other stories about some sites hit by Panda getting some search traffic back. While Dani noted, “We’re still nowhere near where we were before,” she said she was seeing improvements week after week.

The main takeaway from the discussion was that there is hope if you’ve been hit by Panda. You can still do things that help your content rank better. Google has openly discussed some of them.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable polled his readers to see how many have experienced recovery from the Panda update. Over 500 responded, and 4% said they have recovered fully, while another 8% said they’ve recovered, but not fully.

Image credit: Search Engine Roundtable

Obviously this is not representative of the entire web and how sites have performed in Google. It’s a simple poll of 500 people who presumably pay fairly close attention to the search industry. You also have to take into consideration that a lot of people think they were hit by Panda, but may have actually been hit by other less-publicized updates.

Either way, it’s likely accurate in that the majority sites hit have not recovered. If most sites recovered, it would be indicative that Google had not done its job very well. Either that or that tons of low quality content sites have shifted dramatically in favor of truly great content.

Original Article: Google’s "suggest" feature can be quite useful. It can save you time when typing your query if you happen to be searching for something that a lot of others have searched for before you. The feature is even useful for Google itself, because a while back, they began incorporating ads into it.

Google Suggest has some problems though. This is nothing new. People have discovered some strange suggestions from time to time. One that has been discussed around the web frequently this year for example, is Google’s suggestion of "Why wont my parakeet eat my diarrhea" when a user begins a query with "why won’t". This one has even repeatedly made it onto the Google Hot Trends list.

That one was kind of funny (if that’s your sense of humor), but Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable is pointing to a more disturbing set of suggestions from the search engine. When a user begins a query with "little kids," the very first suggestion is "little kids having sexs". Among the other suggestions on the list are "little kids dancing nasty," and "little kids grinding."

Schwartz  also pointed to another suggestion from Google saying "I am Extremely Terrified of Chinese People" that a user is presented with when beginning a query with "I am".

Schwartz notes that Google’s suggestions are purely algorithmic. It’s not as though Google’s staff is actually encouraging searches like these, but the suggestions do highlight the need for some adjustments and/or human intervention.

In the case of the "little kids" suggestions, Schwartz says a Google employee responded to his report by saying, "Thanks for reporting this to me — I’ll take a look." However, at the time of this writing, each of the aforementioned suggestions are still in place.

Have you seen other inappropriate or otherwise odd suggestions from Google Suggest? Share in the comments.
 

Related Articles:

> Google Puts Ads in the Search Box

> Google Suggest Goes Worldwide

> Google Adds "Real-Time" Suggestions to Google News

"We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true," says Moskwa. "We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it."

Search marketers are wondering why Google tells people not to focus on PageRank and removes it from Webmaster Tools, but still keeps it in the Google Toolbar. "Back in 2007, Google wanted feedback on removing PageRank from the Toolbar," says Schwartz. "I felt it was a good idea but the idea died out. Google cannot remove PageRank from the Toolbar, it is too much of their branding. No matter how much Matt Cutts and the Google search quality and webmaster trends team want it removed, I cannot see Google’s executives allowing it."

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim says the role of PageRank has been reduced to nothing more than a "comfort blanket for SEO Noobs." He adds, "I say this, with a high degree of confidence that most experienced SEOs pour over the data in Google Webmaster Tools, whereas those new to the industry likely let the toolbar be their only guiding light."

He also notes, however, that PageRank data can still be useful. For example, it can be a good indicator of a site’s behavior in Google’s index. "Any green means ‘go.’ No green, means there’s something to investigate," says Beal.

Despite this usefulness though, Moskwa pretty much closes the case on Google’s position on it. In fact, she even points to a FAQ page about crawling, indexing, and ranking, which says that webmasters shouldn’t even bother thinking about it. It also says that PageRank is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed, and ranked.

What are your thoughts on PageRank? Discuss below.

"Should you get a verified name? Right now, it doesn’t influence whether your profile will rank better in profile results," says Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land. "But if you’re trying to convince people to trust that the page is really controlled by you, it probably makes sense."

Danny has a great article up looking at the ins and outs of Google Profiles, where he also discusses verification. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable however puts it into an easier step-by-step format:

1. You must go to Google’s Knol site and sign in.
2. Then go to your profile settings.
3.  Click on the "Name Verification" tab
4.  Then choose to verify by phone or via credit card

So basically, you’re not getting verified without giving up a little personal info, which should be a hot topic among those people who frequently criticize Google on privacy. Still, they’ve got to make sure it’s really you one way or another don’t they? And it’s not like you have to get verified.

I have not done this, and my profile is the only one showing up in a search for my name at this point, so I’m not too worried about it. That may change in the future, but for now, I’m good.

You can still verify other email addresses with your Google account right from your profile (no going to Knol or anything). When you go to edit your profile, you’ll see a link for "verify an email address" in the middle of the page under the "Verified Domains" heading. However, if you have an email address that is associated with a different Google account, you will be unable to verify it.

Would you be willing to give Google your phone number or credit card information to get your profile verified? Tell us why or why not.

How important do you think it is to get your profile verified? Share your thoughts with WPN readers.

Google Latitude is a feature in Google Maps for mobile and iGoogle that allows you to share your location with your family and friends in real time.

Barry’s brother-in-law wondered if Google had gotten info about his travel plans from his Gmail account. Barry dismissed the idea. He says:

I quickly asked him to go to ShowMyIP.com and read me what he saw. He said, the ISP data come back as being in Newark. At that point, I figured it was likely not the Wifi network reporting back as being in Florida. I still dismissed it as some weird bug and told him not to worry that Google is anticipating where he will be based on his personal emails.

There is no doubt there have been many reports of Google Latitude showing people at the wrong location. The accuracy of this stuff is not perfect, so it is possible. But still, to show the airport of where he will be in the next few hours, well – that is a bit creepy.

It is quite a strange occurrence. I sent a Google spokesperson an email about it, and she tells me, "Unfortunately, this is just a bug that this Latitude user is experiencing – nothing more."

Bugs with Latitude are nothing new, and there have been instances of it using past locations. Looking toward future locations is likely to unsettle some people though. Privacy concerns over the service have been addressed here in the past.

So I decided to go down a slightly different path for this article. For this, I wanted to get the opinions of some big names in the field about what they thought the most significant things of 2008 were with regards to search, and what the biggest changes were from 2007 to 2008. I figured it would make for a more interesting article and certainly a less time-consuming one not only for me, but for readers as well.

Editor’s Note: It’s been a very interesting year for search, and the coming year promises to be even more so. This article looks at how some of the most recognizable names in the industry view the everchanging industry. Where it has gone and where it is going. What do you think?

And while we’re on celebrating the year coming to the end and the holidays, we’d also like to share this holiday greeting video with you:

Semantic and Intent-Based Search

I decided to start in-house and find out what our own Mike McDonald thought the most significant thing to the search industry was in the year 2008. "I think the biggest POTENTIAL event of ’08 was Microsoft’s purchase of Powerset," he told me. Now keep in mind (in case the emphasis wasn’t enough), he said potential, meaning it could have big implications for the search industry’s future. Powerset is all about language analysis and semantic search. "Semantic search and interpretive queries based on semantics are going to be big. Language and implied intent is a major direction for search moving forward," Mike said. "So, in my opinion, 2008 marks the start of the real race to a more language/intent/semantic approach to search."

There is no doubt that how we receive search results is in for some change. There has certainly been a lot of talk about it with regards to Google, and Yahoo too for that matter with their whole "open" strategy, but we haven’t heard as much about Microsoft on this. Mike may be on to something here. Microsoft no doubt hopes Powerset will be its ace in the hole to gain some search market share.

Personalization, Universal Search, and SearchWiki

Search Engine Roundtable Editor Barry Schwartz had this to say: "I think one of the most significant changes in 2008 was just about a month ago with the launch of SearchWiki in the search results.  Although I think the average searcher is not ready for it, it is here and there are no signs that it will be going away any time soon.  Not only does this give a searcher the ability to boost or remove search results, Google has admitted that they may be using data gleaned from SearchWiki to change the search results for everyone else.  So, I think that this, along with Universal Search, will have one of the most significant impacts in early 2009."

The mere fact that it is Google changing the way they deliver results is enough to make this significant. Google is obviously the top dog in terms of search market share (though not in every country), and most of us use it over its competitors. No matter what Yahoo, Microsoft or anyone else is doing, what Google is doing is going to have a tremendous impact just because its the one more people use.

"The biggest change is the SERP itself. With more universal search, more personalized search, and now SearchWiki, Google is training users to expect ‘more than 10 blue links’," says Atlas Web Service Owner and President Michael Gray. "Other search engines that don’t provide rich results are seen [as] behind the times."

"I’d say that the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008 was the advent of more personalized search, and even more so, the new addition of SearchWiki showing up in Google," says High Rankings CEO Jill Whalen. "It’s too soon to really know what will happen with that, but my guess is that it will cause some reputation management nightmares for many companies."

This is a point that has crossed my mind, and one I intend to explore further in the near future. I think it will be quite interesting to see what kinds of reputation management changes will have to come into play as a result of the changing SERP strategies of the major search engines.

"The biggest change from 2007-2008 was the advent of Universal/Blended Search results which came out in May of 2007," added Whalen. "It has caused some urgency in companies to create multimedia content in order to have their images and/or video snippets show up in the search results."

The Economy and SEO

"In terms of the biggest changes, that might go as far to worry me a bit, is what is going on in the economy," says Schwartz. "We all know about the financial trouble Yahoo is going through to compete with Google and Microsoft.  Yahoo is struggling to survive, as opposed to struggling to even compete and that is scary.   Google, for the first time, is cutting back big time.  They even have decided to not give out holiday gifts this year  – which is significant, in terms of Google.  What type of impact will the economic turn down play in 2009 and search?   Will this impact SEO jobs?  I have seen more and more SEMs loose their jobs recently.  Will this stifle search relevancy?  These are my concerns."

These are certainly valid concerns. Changes in how search results are going to be delivered are going to be challenging for SEOs as it is. 2009 will definitely be a crucial year for SEOs in terms of staying on top of their game.

Community, Professionalism, Clients, and Browsing

"I would say the single biggest change in the field of SEO is the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency in favor of self-promotion at any cost – where people promote spam reporting each other even when their own past reports were both damaging and inconsistent with search engine editorial policies," SEOBook Author Aaron Wall tells me. "The next biggest change would be Google launching a browser. They still have limited market share, but as they gain market share that gives them yet another dimension to view the web through, and gives them even more search market share."

Google’s Chrome browser could really turn into another big thorn in Microsoft’s side not only by dominating more search market share as a result of increased Chrome use, but obviously by cutting into Internet Explorer use, a browser that already had its fair share of competition from the likes of Apple, Mozilla, and Opera.

As far as the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency, this is no doubt directly related to the growth in "social media marketing" and the lack of understanding of the goals of such on the part of many of the people engaging in it.

On the other hand, Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization CEO Dave Davies says, "The biggest change has got to be in the clients.  Clients are coming to us [SEOs] far more informed as to what they want and what the limitations of SEO are.  No longer are people asking for top 10 results for competitive phrases and disappointed when we tell them 3 months just isn’t going to happen.  They understand a lot more about what we’re doing and how long it takes."

Competition and Google’s Increased Domination

"I think 2008 might go down as the year Google moved into complete market share domination, not completely through their own doings, but because Microsoft and Yahoo! failed to reach a deal to combine efforts and because the market has been so tough on Yahoo! while both engines (and other tertiary engines like Ask.com) lost share to Google," says Wizard of Moz (SEOmoz) Rand Fishkin. "In 2007, I held out hope that together, these three – Ask, Yahoo! and Microsoft – along with the possible newcomer, Cuil.com, would have some positive impact in preventing or postponing a Google monopoly, but after 2008, I’m very skeptical that we’ll see anyone keep Google from reaching 90%+ search share in the next few years."

That doesn’t mean the competition won’t continue to try. Yahoo seems to be doing all it can with it’s open search strategy to bring new forms of relevancy to its search results, though its ability to steal away a remarkable amount of Google users remains to be seen.

"The Yahoo-Microsoft Merger That Wasn’t was the most significant thing, as it caused both companies to be weakened against Google and remains as the biggest doubt about their success, as the off-again, on-again rumors continue," says Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan. "Search marketers need healthy competition among the search engines, and the competition ain’t healthy."

Dave Davies also cited this. "Refusing a deal at $33/share and now sitting at around $13 has got to go down as one of the big ‘tragedies’ of 2008 in the search industry," he says.

Adjusting Focus

"The biggest change was probably more awareness that it’s not about getting more traffic but how to better convert the existing traffic you have," says Sullivan. "I hear more and more people paying attention to metrics, these days." I suspect this type of mentality will continue to increase as changes in SERPs render some traditional SEO tactics obsolete.

Another thing SEOs and Internet marketers are going to have to watch out for is what happens with regards to net neutrality. This issue isn’t always brought up in the search engine marketing discussion, but as Cindy Krum discussed with Abby Johnson) in the following video from SES Chicago, it should be.

"The victory of a Net Neutrality supporter in the Presidential race is also a significant event though many may not know it," says Davies. "If I had to say what will have the biggest long term affect on the search industry (and in fact the Internet as a whole) it will be this win by Obama.  No matter where you stand on the issue, the victory itself paints the picture of the future of the Internet."

Mobile Search

"In 2008, we finally witnessed mobile search go mainstream," says MordComm Co-Founder Boris Mordkovich. "With the arrival of the much anticipated Apple iPhone, followed by a collaboration between Google and T-Mobile on the G1, it is becoming clear that mobile devices are going to a whole new level – and taking the Internet and the search experience, as we know it, with them. The SEM marketing community has been anticipating this for quite a while, so I think that we are well prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead."

Wrapping up

In concluding, I would like to thank all of the people mentioned in this article for providing their opinions and insight into the everchanging search industry. I am very pleased with the variety of answers, and I feel it has made for a well-rounded outlook on where the industry is heading. 2008 has been an interesting year for search, but 2009 promises to really shake things up, and you can bet we’ll be there keeping an eye on it. Then, this time next year, perhaps we can reflect on how it all really went down.

What do you think was the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008? What was the biggest change from 2007 to 2008?

RustyBrick‘s Schwartz talked to our own Mike McDonald following a PubCon keynote presentation given by George Wright, Blendtec‘s vice president of marketing and sales.  During the presentation, Wright fed a rake handle into one of his blenders, and in case you haven’t seen or heard, iPods, iPhones, and all other sorts of things have met similar fates.

Drastic?  Perhaps.  But in the beginning, it was also cheap – the campaign started with a budget of about 50 bucks.  And as Schwartz said, the Blendtec guys were just asking, "How do I demonstrate to everybody out there that my blender’s actually better than yours?"

The technical details didn’t matter.  "The real thing for him was actually to get the name Blendtec out there, so when somebody thinks ‘blender,’ they’re thinking Blendtec," Schwartz continued.

So bring on the small budgets, and just be sure to add an ample dose of "fun to watch" and "community interaction."  Schwartz made a point of highlighting the views and comments Blendtec’s YouTube videos have received.

All of this has even led to recognition on some corporate levels.  The Food Network, from which Blendtec originally couldn’t get a response, has now reached out to him.  Other companies, after having their products tossed into blenders, are even including the videos in their own campaigns.

As for the financial effects, Blendtec’s sales are up about 700 percent.  Viral marketing is undeniably a powerful thing.

Barry Schwartz posted Get A Free Link From Wired today on an SEO blog, noting that:

Some SEOs were saddened when Wikipedia added nofollows to external links. Perhaps they’ll perk up to discover that Wired’s semi-Wikipedia challenger has no such blocking

The post proceeded to give advice and instructions for how to spam the Wired How To Wiki.  And it has been by the SEO community.  As a member of the community and working at the provider of its most excellent wiki software, I edited out some of the spam as it didn’t meet the goals of the community.  But its not that simple.

I believe the intent was to point out an exploit, and not necessarily for bad.  The problem rests with nofollow being a good tool for some purposes (blog comment spam) and not for others (wikis in general).  I had a quick email exchange with Danny Sullivan and he also talked with Wired and edited the post:

NOTE FROM DANNY: We’ve talked with Wired about the situation, and they are putting a robots.txt block on links coming out of the wiki so that links won’t pass credit. Also, our apologies to Wired in that we’ve ended up causing a run on the wiki with new pages being created. That was definitely not our intent — the headline of getting a free link, and the article itself, was more tongue-in-cheek about how the system was and might further get abused, rather than advice for people to really misuse the wiki for promotional purposes. I don’t agree with that type of abuse in general, and as someone who has had to deal with it in comments or submissions to our forums, it’s no fun. In hindsight, we probably should have just dropped a note pointing out the vulnerability. We’ve also asked that our test page be completely removed — it has served its purpose now.

If every website was a wiki I might have edited something similar on their post while disabling the link.  Later over a drink with Paolo Valdermin I was joking that we should invent the unfollow link, or make it so any traffic coming from the site doing damage was rejected.  But I’m joking and need to digress into a topic most people don’t understand:

unfollow was a byproduct of Vote Links, created by Kevin Marks, which I believe I had a hand in at least inspiring.  It was designed as a tool for making blog comments not count in Google’s PageRank, while letting the blog post’s links count.  Blog comments are relatively good at dealing with comment spam because of what Clay Shirky described as encapsulation — every blog has an owner who can determine how to moderate their comments.  nofollow is just one way. 

Now comments with nofollow enabled get spam anyway, maybe because the fact that the blog host is communicating behind the scenes with search engines is ignored, or that SEO isn’t the only goal of the spammer.  If you own a blog, you deal with manually sorting through vandalism all the time. 

Still, nofollow is a good thing for some Social Software.  But it doesn’t belong or work everywhere.  Can you imagine a web that works as good as today’s if every link was tagged with nofollow?

Wikipedia enabled nofollow, much to the chagrin of the SEO community, for some good reasons that also need additional context:

• Wikipedia is an exception to any other wiki community on the web
• Wikipedia has no feature to detect and delete spam, instead it is a feature made of people, who are better at such decisions when one of the goals of the system is openness
• Wikipedia’s core editors are extremely burdened with this task because of how valuable its attention is
• The result is Wikipedia gets lots of link love, but doesn’t give any to anyone

IMHO, Wikipedia made a mistake implementing nofollow.  While blogs have one or a couple authors, a few commenters, and many readers — wikis have many authors and many readers.  In an a wide open wiki, just one possible configuration, you can’t tell who is trustable or accountable given the missing identity and reputation layers of the web.  nofollow doesn’t work for wikis because:

• Wikis are part of the web of links
• I haven’t seen a partial and prudent implementation of nofollow in a wiki.  And its hard to picture one that doesn’t discriminate upon users automatically.  You could make nofollow apply to links from "trusted users" but different communities should develop different rules for trust.  And such rules could kill communities, especially nascent ones by hard coding rules too early.
• There are other wiki spam countermeasures
• If you enable nofollow, every link gives no value, regardless of its value, and that value is best defined by the community using it

Part of how wikis deal with spam is the phantom authority — there is a higher transaction cost for damaging a wiki than fixing it.  And people are generally good.

That said, even though I may not want to be in business with a web like this, I care about what’s been created on this wiki.  And so I’ll be spending some of my time this weekend reverting vandalism.  Better that than giving in by shutting it down, or uninformed suggestions to bluntly implement nofollow.  Besides, the irony is that some of the SEO posts actually have some good How To content that actually needs a little human editing.

Some links to SEO Posts about all this (maybe they will pitch in if I link to them): WebProNews, Wired News and Mashable!

Comments

There’s no need to fret about travel plans to SMX West, the big event Sullivan’s group will host in Santa Clara later in February. The SMX series will be moving full steam ahead as it has been.

However, the serendipity of Barry Schwartz’s upcoming trip to Israel offered an opportunity for Sullivan to try out something completely different. SphinnCon debuts in Jerusalem in early February.

Unlike the larger, two or three day conferences under the SMX brand, SphinnCon, named for the Sphinn social media site operated by Sullivan, will be much more compact. The noon to 6 pm event will admit 150 people at $50 per person.

Three sessions, on paid links, the PPC model, and social media, will take place, sandwiched by some networking time.

When we chatted by phone with Schwartz, he said once the idea of SphinnCon took form, organizing the Jerusalem event took about a month. He credited local SEO businesses there for helping get the ball rolling.

This should lead to a full fledged SMX conference in Israel, as Schwartz plans to work on developing it over the course of 2008. As for other SphinnCons, where they might land next will be up to the members of Sphinn to choose.

A message thread on Sphinn announcing SphinnCon has been filling up with suggestion of places to have the next ones. Votes for cities around the US, as well as Toronto, Brisbane, Amsterdam, and other international sites have been mentioned.

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