Does not sound like a rant to me. Accurate. It is a catch 22. I am thinking google will and I think in some ways google will give higher rank for 2.0 websites. That should break those links sites. Darrin Chandler wrote: On Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 02:33:38PM -0700, keith smith wrote: > Have you factored in inbound links? They are votes also. I know that. I think you're missing my point. I am *not* courting search engines. It's *their* job to find and index information, and return valuable results. None of them are very good at it just now, though Google is better than the rest. There are inbound links, but not nearly as many as the mega sites. Which goes to show the folly of putting too much emphasis on inbound links, because my site has actual information on it and there's has none. Stressing inbounds links so heavily also creates a positive feedback loop: people will only link to what they find, and they usually only find things in the first few results. It's a method that worked *brilliantly* when Brin & Page were starting out as the underdogs and Google didn't influence the actual link popularity of pages themselves. The situation now is suboptimal from almost anyone's point of view (though it's not horrible). Where I care about traffic I court the search engines, and do pretty well. The fact that I need to consider that is the real root of the problem. As long as I can (and must) do stupid silly things to my sites so that Google will like me better, there's an opportunity for exploitation. Heck, it's an invitation, not an opportunity. When I can focus on the content and presentation, and have the search engines reward me for *that* then they will have arrived, and it will be much harder for web spam sites. The rise of sites like del.icio.us and Stumbled Upon show a dissatifcation with search engines and portals. They will probably have to face mass exploitation some day, but for now they can provide *much* better results in some circumstances. Sheesh, I must be in a ranting mood today. -- Darrin Chandler | Phoenix BSD Users Group dwchandler@stilyagin.com | http://bsd.phoenix.az.us/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ | --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss - - - - - - - Keith Smith - - - - - - - http://travelingcheese.com/search_engine/increase-search-engine-traffic.html - - - - - - - --------------------------------- All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.