Two of my very favorite techno blogger all-around-great guys, Matt Cutts and Jeremy Zawodny, have created a very spirited online debate about a recent paid linking experiment at Jeremy’s blog. Thanks in large part to Matt’s efforts over the past few years paid linking has become a very controversial topic and tactic for SEOs. Most I’ve talked to still employ the tactic and feel it works, but try to keep it “under the radar screen” of Google.

Search engines, especially Google, see paid linking as a serious manipulation of the ranking algorithm. Matt indicates they have many ways to detect this type of linking algorithmically and I’d guess they have a pretty robust database of sites that offer and resell paid links.

Generally Google recommends adding the “nofollow” tag for paid links, or using alternative forms of advertising. In fairness to some criticism adsense and adwords are effectively “nofollow” forms of ads, not counting in the pagerank calculations for pages at a site.

HOWEVER and importantly, it seems to me the debate is not really about linking, but about *excessive penalties* for things seen as hurting the indexing process.

Matt’s posts imply that in the war on spam, Google may be following the very controversial notions espoused by uber conservative Barry Goldwater some time ago talking about Viet Nam War. Goldwater said “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”.

Matt – are you saying: “Extremism in the defense of the Google Algorithm is no vice?” I hope not.

Sure you can execute people for running a stop light, and this will reduce traffic violations, but it’s not a prudent social change mechanism for obvious reasons. And it’s evil. Google, please don’t be evil.

Holy destabilization of the search landscape Batmen and Batwomen!

Amazon’s ALEXA.com has been ranking and archiving the web for some time, creating what may be the web’s largest archive of old site info plus a ton of current info. Google guards their algorithm and data stores as trade secrets, as does Yahoo.

NOT SO ALEXA who has announced they are opening up the data store, adding advanced programming routines for the grabbing, and opening up to anybody with a .com and a prayer.

I’ll test the beta soon hopefully, but this could be big. REALLY BIG if the routines are powerful. Some have suggested this will be a sort of IBM Webfountain for the masses. Webfountain is arguably the world’s most powerful and best search, so if Alexa can scale that power to mass information retrieval some really interesting stuff may happen in search.

This is yet another step to users ruling the roost as they rightly should.

Yahoo is collecting a “database of wisdom”. I wonder what they’ll do with it?

In his book “The Search”, John Battelle talks about the “database of intentions” that Google has collected and can now mine to get a sort of “human interest model” and use it to hone services, predict outcomes, serve advertising, and much more.

Yet in addition to analysis of regular search results, Yahoo is certainly going to integrate information pouring in via the new Yahoo Answers plus the new Yahoo del.icio.us tag farm. Taken together these create more than a database of intentions, they create a database of collective wisdom. Yahoo is getting it big time, thanks in no small part to the very clever Jeremy Zawodny and his fellow team members.

What is the critical mass of participants for such information to be useful and relevant?
I’m guessing they are past that point already. Analysis and reporting could be a challenge, however.

Yahoo Answers is a very clever concept:

1) Engage Yahoo’s very large search community in the answers without much Yahoo editing needed.

2) Let that large community value the info.

3) Reward very helpful people.

Wondir’s mechanics are similar to this model, but this concept had to be embraced by one of the big players with their millions of potential participants.

I have a feeling the Yahoo combination of search and wisdom will be a success. I count a new question approximately every 6-10 seconds. The geek buzz around del.ici.ous has been increasing for some time.

Google will copy this soon and that’s a great thing about good ideas – they proliferate fast.

I suggested in the last post that privacy and the internet don’t really mix very well and people should stop worrying about their personal information flowing online (this is inevitable!) or getting used in murderous or malicious ways (unlikely in most cases).

In keeping with this idea I shall share something from the “that is more than we needed to know, Joe” department: A Flexible Sigmoidoscopy is not as uncomfortable as you’d think it would be! If you are putting off a procedure like this, or the more comprehensive version – a colonoscopy – don’t put it off any more – early detection can save your life!

Why a Sigmoidoscopy, you ask? Because my wife was the “lucky winner” at our Unitarian Church’s silent auction where the very generous Gastroenterologist Dr. Walker put up the service. “Here, look what I got for you”, said Kathy. At the office the doctor walked into the exam room with a very big smile on his face “So, you are the lucky winner!”.

At least he got the irony of it all.

My daughter asked this morning: Dad, how are they going to get the camcorder to go up your …. ?

I told this story to the doctor and without hesitation he said “inch by inch”.

I think the field of Gastroenterology probably confers upon the practitioners a rather unusual sense of humor.

Probably an unusual sense of other things as well.

You made it this far??

Thanks for caring. Yes, I came out with a clean bill of health.

John Battelle and fellow blogger Bruno have been waxing somewhat dramatically about the implications of a Google-ized information world, where the massive data stores create all sorts of problems as employees or entire companies go gonzo in a sort of WMD-style information attacks on the world.

Me to the bartender:
“I’ll have what Bruno and Battelle have been drinking”

These scenarios are fun but totally unrealistic. These guys either have much more provocative, interesting and easy-to-compromise secret lives than most people or they are out of touch with Joe public, who has very limited information of interest to all but close family and friends.

A quick scan over the sea of blogged personal information demonstrates this clearly, especially when you reasonably assume that bloggers tend to be more interesting than …. average peeps(!?)

Most people – and I think most businesses – would not necessarily even be adversely affected in a “total information awareness” world. Some aspects of that world would be akin to the (on balance) positive changes affecting music and publishing industries as barriers to entry, copyright, ownership, and rights are all getting redefined at the speed of cash and enthusiasm.

Frankly I see more advantages than disadvantages – secrecy tends to reward the wrong groups. Transparency is destabilizing in a good way.

Viva la Revolucion Informacion!

.community is the .key ? You can bet your I.T. department on it.

Perhaps a critical distinction between Web 1.0 and 2.0 is the degree to which 2.0 has (finally) embraced as essential *community* and *participation* as cornerstones of a quality relationship between technology and the people served by technology.

The process has a long way to go, but it’s very encouraging to see the *big* players working hard to seduce the *key* players in the online equation – the users.

I’m not a Microsoft basher, especially since the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has heroically challenged the idea that the rich ignore the poor. However it’s also true that Microsoft has been by far one of the worst culprits when it comes to ignoring the community in favor of the needs of corporate dominance.

For years MSN kept the broad user community at bay – we were chained to MS out of necessity and not loyalty.

A few years ago this all changed and MS dominance is quickly slipping away. The open source movement has grown in strength, Microsoft’s adoption of the internet as the central theme of all things computerized remains sluggish, and Google and Yahoo continue to innovate and provide free and excellent programs to users and developers.

Of the big three in search Yahoo seems to be understanding this community factor the best. Yahoo Answers, Yahoo 360, Yahoo Maps, Aquiring Del.ico.us are all in line with the focus on people more than technology. Google, as the newest, hippest, and coolest kid on the block, gets a LOT of mileage from these factors despite the fact users are serving them even more than they serve the users who have made Google what they are today.

As the big three’s search quality converges the advertising revenues will be distributed more evenly across the search landscape. Yet advertising money will also increase dramatically as slow adopters figure out the overwhelming power of online advertising. Everybody can win in this scenario, but the one who wins the most should be the one who best serves the online community.

The search landscape sure changes fast.

Yahoo’s purchase of del.icio.us is yet another indication that they intend to highly leverage the participation of the web community in the rankings process. Google remains very confident in their algorithmic approach, perhaps because they see any forms of user participation as too spammable. Yet Google appears to be under the greatest attack by spammers due to their high market share for search.

Google’s brilliant “pagerank” innovation counted on an indirect form of community “voting” through site links, but del.icio.us is a much more robust voting system, especially when Yahoo redesigns the interface to be less geeky.

The search battles are REALLY getting interesting now – MSN Search pretty much let’s the computer decide. They have what is perhaps the largest Neural Network in the world and appear to be moving towards a system where humans only intervene in the program to fix serious problems. Google’s approach is also algorithmic but appears to involve more “programmer participation” and site filtering than MSN’s.

Yahoo, with a history of being the first major web directory along with extensive editorial oversight, has adopted a hybridized algorithm plus editor model, and with today’s aquisition of del.icio.us they’ll enlist the community in direct voting for sites.

MSN’s recent discussion indicates they may soon be paying people to use their search. They also will soon compete with Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher network to pay for content based ads.

The search landscape, built almost entirely on advertising revenues, is changing at the speed of cash.

I’m not easily impressed with technology. Most of the time new “inventions” are crap – most are designed to be easily sellable, convince people to invest in them, or satisfy the bizarre or odd whim of the designer.

Today, however, I ran into one and used it – probably for the last time in my life – yet I was really impressed. In fact I liked this invention more than the (justifiably well reviewed) Treo 650 phone I got earlier this year and have yet to figure out enough to make it worth the cost.

Oh yeah – the invention was an “insulation blower”, used for cellulose blow in insulation we just blasted into the playroom/office we’ve been remodelling for the past 300 years or so. The device is sort of a reverse vacuum that blows shredded bits of paper through a 50′ hose that you swing around up in your attic. The cleverness is in how robust the blow fan was combined with twirling metal bars that chopped up the tightly packed insulation. I’d throw in chunks, break them up with my hand, and the machine would finish off the process and blow it up the hose.

It only took my wife and me about 3 hours to do over 500′ of ceiling, the material cost far less than bat insulation and this was much easier than installing it, and now we’ve got a cozy playroom.

Kudos to pragmatic, effective technology!

Wow, Yahoo is coming up with some great stuff these days:

Yahoo has just launched a very interesting search experiment, and I predict it will be hugely successful. Yahoo Answers lets you type in a question which is publicly posted, effectively broadcasting it to thousands of people online. Google answers was a “good” idea but it cost money and had a limited pool of responders – a departure from Google’s ‘free is best’ philosophy.

Yahoo trumps this with free answers and plans to actually pay publishers with a history of good answers to questions. This cost structure will not only reward the community members who create quality content but it will reward Yahoo as the system becomes more robust. This is a powerful combination.

Why do I have a hunch Jeremy Zawodny had a lot to do with this concept?

Yahoo Answers

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