oh, noes, it appears our old fella browsehappy.com is hacked again!
(don’t bother deleting this topic. it’s cached)
and finally the source of HTML code. every footer’s affected.
now, I wander whether cache of the search engines constitutes a valid reliable source? and if so should the WikiPedia entry on BrowseHappy.com be updated (including the Matt’s rollback of the previous ‘hack’)?
bubel, new .com fora mod let it out, “there is no published rule…” to be expelled from the link farm. and contnues,
We are not limiting your freedom by doing this. This is not censorship, as your blog is still available in every shape and form.
no, tale-tellers, it is fucking censorship because we can’t opt out of linking to your link farm! and you also made it so that no one could escape it.
I wonder if anyone not banned yet could tell those sheep that:
“The global tag links were never intended to be useful for anyone other than Automattic.”
else why do you delete posts, tags* and close the whole topics in the fora? are you paid per deleted post/tag/closed topic? if so then you should ask Matt for an addition to your salary.
no, you don’t need to ask for an addition to your salary. my puppet was bozoed. again. hello Matt!
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*) posts on this page have this tag removed. same thing with the ‘global_tags‘, ‘spamdexing‘ et al.
article on MySpace in English WP has a nice subheading ‘Revenue model‘:
MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user. Through its Web site and affiliated ad networks, MySpace is second only to Yahoo! in it its capacity to collect data about its users and thus in its ability to use behavioral targeting to select the ads each visitor sees.
On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace. <…>
Companies such as Slide.com, RockYou!, and YouTube were all launched on MySpace as widgets providing additional functionality to the site. Other sites created layouts to personalize the site and made hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owners…
unfortunately, the very poorly edited entry on wordpress.com lacks this important heading. its importance is due to the fact that Automattic places Google ads on the personal blogs hosted at .com is cunningly passed over in silence at sign up.
anyway, for a potential wiki editors Root came up with a very succinct definition of wordpress.com’s business model. just two words: Google’s bitch!
This is not exactly news already. But till this very moment I was repeatedly saying that I’ve never been able to see ads on the notorious Global Tags™ pages for myself. Now it’s changed, I do stand corrected in this post because That Girl was always right on money from the very beginning, Again, and again.
So, yeah:
Sorry, we don’t have any posts here with that tag
…but we’ve got plenty of Hot Nachos ads for you to click through instead:
On this splogshot you can see a typical WordPress.com Global Tag page linked from so called Mature .com blogs for many times*. Such “Not Found” pages contains ads only; they does not even link back to the originating blogs. But the funniest thing is that those pages said not even 404s (“Not found”), they’re full blown 200 (“OK”) and thereby indexed by the search engines.
That is why, in this moment, we can also see the following picture of the Google’s index**:
Please notice the links right above and below the link in question: Adam was the first who noticed this horrific user experience. Also of note: this blank (well, except the AdSense and partner’s affiliated links) Automattic’s global tags page even outranked those Technorati’s ones, which do contain some bits of the actual content (linkbacks at the very least)!
I objected and reported this usability issue on multiple occasions both privately and publicly. It only resulted in closing forums threads where it happened. Finally, along with several other volunteers, Automattic banned me from the fora at all. That said, I got absolutely no doubts that Automattic is perfectly aware about producing links intended to manipulate Google’s PageRank algorithm. (Of course you are if such a link scheme is actually a cornerstone your company’s business model built upon.)
Since obviously such pages are “made entirely for the search engines, not for users” and “published specifically for the purpose of showing ads”, this is nothing but a direct violation of basic principles of Google’s “Webmaster Quality Guidelines“, as well as of their own “AdSense Program Policies”.
So, this is an intentional behavior intended to increase revenues via spamdexing (SEO gaming) the search engines (Yahoo, MS Live Search). I only wander why nobody from the legion of the SEO experts notice this? Are they also so deep down in the SE’s back pocket?
The only exception to this rule makes Andy Beard, who for the several times questioned Automattic’s spamdexing peculiar linking practice since the very inception of this link farm on WordPress.com.
—
well, yes, I know it’s actually another Matt and the Google Webspam Team who needs to be asked in the first place. but anyway, would the oncoming interview with Matt M On WordPress Weekly be a proper place to politely ask about all this mess?
ETA: I guess not exactly.
*) for the non-wordpress.com’ers: GT links are compulsory for all .com users. The price of opt-out and the only way to get out of this link farm is getting off the search engines altogether by marking their blog as Private.
**) yes, a ’phrase operator’, i.e. quotes, was used here for a clearness. but it does not matter too much — even without it said link still is ranked high enough to be on the first page.
<END OF THE ACTUAL POST>
a somewhat peculiar video response to: define broke. watch more…
JAWW (beta) 