Comments on: Helping Martin Luther King

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:41:59 +0000

Well, and thanks for visiting mine

As far as visualnary.com goes, I now am #1 on google. But without any SEO tricks, plugins, metakeywording. Just a) using a name that nobody knows and b) offering content. (tongue in cheek)

It is actually a bit sad that any good web programmer now has to spend so much time on SEO tricks, rather than on design or – gasp – content.

By: Hans

Hans — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:16:32 +0000

Thanks for your visit on my blog Martin. I think nowadays it’s within the reach of anyone to attain #1 position on Google. There are plugins that convert tags into keywords so that may have helped the crawlers putting the site on top. Indeed there are so many SEO tricks that can be used, only some determination is required in here.

Many blogs and sites have been hacked recently, perhaps the hackers could help by hacking the site *joking*

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:27:08 +0000

Very good comment, Stéphanie.

What I reacted to was Google arguing against “bombing”, even if used against a site that must have used “bombing” in the first place.

Anyway, the whole issue is indeed a reminder not to take the “internet” as the authorative source for research. (As a joke I sometimes say: “It’s true! I read it on the internet!”)

By: Stéphanie

Stéphanie — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:55:14 +0000

Well, that’s a Google issue really. Google ranking is more about popularity than about authority. It’s easy to forget and most of the time when doing research online, we’ll visit the top websites of the results page, right? So it’s up to each of us to take a good look at what we are reading and to decide if it is relevant or not.

Now here is the question: would it be ethical if Google or any other search engine started ranking websites according to authority, quality and accuracy of content? How could they do that anyway. Who would decide? Should there be some kind of organization or panel of experts to do that work for us?
Wouldn’t that go against neutrality and freedom of opinionand?

It is an interesting question and some people are debating this but the point is, when we are online, we need to keep in mind that ranking and top results don’t necessarily mean the information delivered to us is correct or honest.

P.S.: lol, love the first result of “failure” on Google, I didn’t know about this. Irony, irony…

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:13:31 +0000

Thanks for your comment. The good news is that the 'wrong' web page is now down to rank #6 in Google. In a comment on Doug's post, it is said that Google is actually against this practice of "bombing". But then a) Google should have some sort of responsibility for the accuracy of their links b) How did the 'wrong' webpage end up as Google's #1 hit, if not by bombing in the first place? Or, as Peter puts it,

How were they (i.e. Stormfront) able to reach #1 with only 372 backlinks and a Pagerank 6? Any SEO tricks being used there?

Anyway, "failure" still returns the same old hit on Google.

By: Stéphanie

Stéphanie — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:11:47 +0000

Hey, another blogger posted about this a while ago and suggested the same approach in order to lower the Google rank of the "evil" website. I think I might post something about this too actually, just a question of awareness and to remind people that questioning the resources the web makes available are not always reliable. Thanks for posting this. Here is the link to the blogger who pointed this out to me earlier: Peter Forret's post. Cheers.