Tutorial: Use iFrames no Facebook

Tutorial: Use iFrames no Facebook: "

Olá, amigos da MestreSEO.

Na semana passada conversamos um pouco sobre a nova fan page do Facebook. Vimos algumas mudanças consideráveis e o que ela poderá trazer de benefício para vocês que usam a rede social para divulgar sua empresa ou marca.

PS: Vale o parênteses aqui para a informação de que, agora, parece estar tudo bem com a nova fan page, haja visto que enfrentamos alguns problemas para visualizar as novas mudanças. Se você ainda não ativou sua fan page, entre no link de ativação do Facebook.

Outra coisa que comentamos há algumas semanas e que tem relação com a nova fan page, é a depreciação pelo FBML. Aquela linguagem própria, que surgiu como inovação e como meio facilitador para que os usuários alterassem suas páginas, agora não tem mais a mesma moral.

O Facebook implementou – e agora recomenda – o uso de iFrames para trabalhar nas fan pages. Mas será que foi uma boa mudança? O que ganharemos com essa troca feita pelo time desenvolvimento de Mark Zuckerberg?

No artigo desta semana, decidi fazer um guia rápido de como se trabalhar com iFrames dentro de sua fan page. Você verá, ao final da leitura, que foi uma bela alteração, principalmente para nós usuários que encontrávamos certas limitações com as aplicações em FBML.

Uma Página Dentro de Outra

Como o próprio subtítulo aí em cima, iFrame é um recurso que permite a colocação de uma página dentro de outra. Seguindo a mesma definição popular para o Facebook, o que basicamente poderemos fazer, com a liberação dos iFrames dentro da rede social, é jogarmos diversos conteúdos nas fan pages.

O caminho inicial para inserirmos um conteúdo por iFrame dentro da fan page, portanto, passa pela criação de uma página html dentro de seu site/servidor. Monte o conteúdo, hospede em seu site e guarde a URL.

Para exemplificar as ações, pegamos uma ferramenta recém-criada pela nossa equipe aqui na MestreSEO: a Suggest Extractor. Vamos supor que quero deixá-la para interação dos fãs da nossa fan page.

O segundo passo é criarmos uma aba customizada para este conteúdo. O Facebook decidiu que cada nova página colocada por iFrame é tratada basicamente com App. Uma idéia interessante, que discutiremos posteriormente num artigo mais direcionado à essa decisão.

Vá, portanto, para a página de Developers do Facebook. Logado em sua conta, clique no botão superior “+ Set Up New App”. Você navegará pelos campos básicos como se fosse criar um aplicativo para a rede social. Coloque o nome, aceite os Termos do Facebook e vamos ao próximo passo.

Preencha os campos. Coloque o nome, descreva sua página (se quiser) e escolha um ícone e um logo. Essas imagens ficarão colocadas ao lado do nome da aba que você decidiu anteriormente. Deixe um e-mail de contato, escolha os administradores e salve o processo.

Você irá para a tela de conclusão e verificação das informações do “aplicativo”. Clique, no menu de links à direita, em Edit Settings e volte para a página de informações do passo anterior. No menu à esquerda, entre em Facebook Integration.

Neste ponto, você precisa inserir as informações de onde está localizado o conteúdo que você irá jogar dentro do Facebook. Cole a URL de destino, apenas o domínio, no campo Canvas URL. Não se esqueça, claro, de marcar a opção iFrame (que já vem por default, mas é bom conferir).

Desça um pouco para preencher as informações da aba. Qual o nome que ela levará na home de sua fan page? O Facebook limita em 16 caracteres este campo. Em Tab URL, coloque o arquivo.html que você criou (ou o restante do domínio). Salve o conteúdo.

No topo da página, ao lado do título de sua nova criação, está o link “Back to my Apps”, clique e você será direcionado para a home de seu desenvolvimento. Você verá sua aplicação em destaque, como no passo acima, após salvar as primeiras informações. Naquele mesmo menu à direita, clique em Application Profile Page.

Você será direcionado a uma página padrão de aplicativo do Facebook. Você reconhecerá o layout se estiver acostumado em adicionar apps para suas fan pages. Não se preocupe em editar o conteúdo, mas sim em clicar no link à esquerda – Add to My Page (ou Adicionar à minha Página). Escolha a fan page que irá receber a sua nova criação e adicione o “aplicativo”.

Volte para sua fan page. Observe que sua criação estará lá, inclusive com o ícone que você escolheu:

Clique e veja o conteúdo!

Vale a Pena!

Repare como ficou mais fácil interagir e colocar novos conteúdos com iFrame. A criação de um aplicativo, via Developers do Facebook, pode gerar ainda mais oportunidades para você que está no mercado e deseja investir forte no Facebook. Pense em outras alternativas, não enxergue que isso é apenas um caminho para adicionar uma bela “welcome page” para sua página de empresa.

Quem sabe você não descobre uma veia de desenvolvedor de aplicativos e ganha ainda mais fãs? Pense nisso!

Um abraço e até a próxima semana!

Precisa de Ajuda?

Se você precisa de uma ajuda para montar a fan page, desenvolver estratégias, inserir o FBML e outras situações envolvendo o Facebook, procure-nos para uma consultoria. Basta entrar em contato para mais informações.

Crédito da imagem no topo: Erwin Photography

Artigo produzido por MestreSEO, empresa especializada em Otimização de Sites. Não perca a oportunidade de conferir as nossas ferramentas de SEO.


Artigo Original: Tutorial: Use iFrames no Facebook

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Aproveite a oportunidade para participar do nosso Curso de SEO. Garanta já a sua vaga: http://www.mestreseo.com.br/curso-de-seo

"

40 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed

40 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed: "

The long winter is almost over and as the weather gets ever better we at Mashable are hard at work bring you a list of tools and resources for your digital life.

Here you’ll find stories on how a computer beat Jeopardy champions, pics of the latest toys from this year’s New York Toy Fair, and a load of hands-on demos and impressions from the Mobile World Congress.

Looking for even more social media resources? This guide appears every weekend, and you can check out all the lists-gone-by here any time.

---

Editors’ Picks

---

• HOW TO: Develop Ideas That Will Disrupt Your Industry
  Disruptive thinking can help you reinvent your business and start solving problems you didn’t even know existed. Here are three strategies for re-imagining your industry.
• What Brands Can Learn From Taco Bell’s Social Media Lawsuit Defense
  When a class action lawsuit took shape against Taco Bell, the company readied its social media defenses and was able to mitigate a lot of reputation damage in the online space. Here’s a look at their strategies.
• HOW TO: Stream Your Media to Every Device in the House
  A growing number of companies are developing software and services to make sharing content across devices easier and less stressful. Here are some options worth looking into.
• 5 Website Features You Can Easily Offload to Reduce Costs
  There are pros and cons to hosting certain web features off-site. Here’s a breakdown of some of the most common options.
• HOW TO: Jump-Start Your Career by Becoming an Online Influencer
  Always wanted to be an influencer but didn’t know where to start? Here are 10 effective techniques.
• Why Watson’s Win Doesn’t Make Humanity Obsolete… Yet
  Despite Watson’s tremendous performance, it struggles with simple questions most humans can answer easily.
• Just How Open Is Your Internet? [INFOGRAPHICS]
  America, the champion of democracy and freedom, actually has more Internet censorship than some countries in Africa and South America, according to new research.

---

Social Media

---

• How We Use Social Media During Emergencies [INFOGRAPHIC]
  Here’s an infographic showing the myriad ways social media helps us in our times of need.
• Social Networking Americans’ Valentine’s Day Plans [INFOGRAPHIC]
  How do Americans spend Valentine’s Day? Check out this infographic for insights.
• 12 Ways to Use Quora For Your Job Search
  Here are 12 ways to use Quora as a platform to build your reputation, establish your expertise, and get on the radar of recruiters and company execs for potential employment.
• Google’s Valentine’s Day Doodle Through the Years [PICS]
  Google’s first Valentine’s-themed Doodle appeared in 2000, so we took a look back at the search giant’s efforts through the years.
• 12 Love-Themed Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs for Valentine’s Day [PICS]
  Whether you want to view romance-related quotes or discover what computational knowledge engines love, Wolfram Alpha has the answer with these fun Easter eggs.
• Facebook Photos By the Numbers [INFOGRAPHIC]
  Facebook’s photo collection is about 60 billion photos large. Its contents are broken down in this infographic.
• HOW TO: Turn Your Facebook Profile Photo Into a Video
  Learn how to replace your Facebook profile photo with a sound-enabled video.
• Apple’s New Subscription Model & What it Means for Publishers
  Apple has formally launched a new subscription feature for content publishers.
• Apple vs. Publishers: Why Apple Already Won
  In publishing, the balance of power has permanently, irreversibly shifted from the media companies to the tech firms. Here’s why.
• HOW TO: Pick the Right Super Power for a Modern World [COMIC]
  Modern technology means we no longer have to rely on radioactive spiders for all of our superhuman needs. There are far more efficient ways to be awesome in the 21st century.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

---

Tech & Mobile

---

• Why Microsoft Is Nokia’s Last Best Hope [OPINION]
  Microsoft may have been Nokia’s only option, but it is far from a guarantee of success. Still, here’s why these two computing giants are a good fit.
• 10 iPod Touch 4G Cases That Stand Out From the Crowd [PICS]
  We have found 10 iPod touch 4G cases that stand out from the crowd, whether that’s through an eye-catching pattern or a cool, customizable design. Check them out!
• HANDS ON: LG Optimus 3D
  We’ve had a chance to try out the LG Optimus 3D, the world’s first glasses-free 3D Android smartphone, and although the device is not without quirks, we’re impressed.
• HANDS ON: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
  Here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Tab 10.1 is attracting more buzz than just about any other device.
• 5 of the Best Streaming Media Services Compared
  Here’s a look at how Netflix, Amazon Video-on-Demand, Hulu Plus, VUDU and iTunes stack up against each other.
• The 10 Coolest New Toys at This Year’s Toy Fair [PICS]
  The 10 coolest new toys at this year’s Toy Fair, with pictures.
• HANDS ON: Sony Ericsson’s “PlayStation Phone”
  The Xperia Play is an Android phone where the slide-out keyboard has been replaced by slide-out PlayStation controls for easy gaming.
• 5 Top Social Games and Why They’re So Successful
  Here’s a look at five of the most popular social games and how they manage to connect us in ways we wouldn’t have thought possible just years ago.
• How Open Data Initiatives Can Improve City Life
  Building apps that make use of government data may not be feasible for many cities, but opening that data up to the developer community has proven fruitful for some.
• Hands On With HTC’s New Smartphones & Tablet [PICS]
  Mashable managed to get pictures of every HTC device at the Mobile World Congress. Here they are.
• Tablets of the Mobile World Congress [PICS]
  Take a look at some of the tablets shown at the Mobile World Congress.
• How the WordPress SEO Plugin Can Help Your Blog [INTERVIEW]
  WordPress SEO is the latest, greatest SEO plugin solution for WordPress. We spoke with creator Joost de Valk about its features.
• Why 3 Startups Are Betting That You’ll Want to Stream Your Browser History
  To share a piece of content on the social web, you need to select it and input it into Twitter or Facebook. But what if you could stream your surfing habits to friends automatically?
• 5 Ways Mobile Will Transform Commerce
  As smartphones become so closely linked with our identities, the way we shop, pay and socialize around transactions will undergo a significant change.
• HOW TO: Grow Your Sales and Revenue Using 2D Codes
  Here’s a primer and some key examples of how top companies are using 2D codes in creative ways.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

---

Business

---

• 4 Small Business Mobile Predictions for 2011
  With more than 70% of the world’s population owning a mobile phone, it’s time for small businesses to pay attention to mobile and begin planning their mobile strategy now.
• How Facebook Deals Are Helping One NBA Team Connect With Fans
  The Golden State Warriors are using Facebook Deals to enhance game night for Facebook fans.
• How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
  See which social networks small businesses are using and how.
• 8 Educational iPhone Apps for Small Business Owners
  With more people using smartphones, companies can take advantage of mobile training options. Here are a few possibilities to consider.
• 10 Online Tools and Tips for the Budding Entrepreneur
  We asked a panel of 11 successful young entrepreneurs what virtual tools they use to stay lean, effective and productive.
• How The iPad Is Helping Businesses Go Green
  Apple’s iPad is helping businesses take on more environmentally friendly habits, enabling them to cut costs and save resources.
• How the Auto Industry Is Embracing Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
  This comprehensive infographic looks at how Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda are faring in the social media marketing world.
• How Social Media Helped Toy Story 3 Win at the Box Office
  Here’s a closer look at how Toy Story 3‘s social media marketing campaign helped it become the most successful animated film in history.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Image courtesy of Webtreats etc.

More About: business, Features Week In Review, gadgets, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, social media, tech, technology

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

"

O fenômeno das redes sociais no brasil

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O fenômeno das redes sociais no brasil

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Marketing na Era Digital, por Martha Gabriel

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Marketing na Era Digital, por Martha Gabriel

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Bing Sending More SEO Traffic Than Yahoo! Search?

Bing Sending More SEO Traffic Than Yahoo! Search?: "

With some lower traffic smaller sites it is easy to get outlier data that is skewed & somewhat irrelevant (especially true if you have a website which happens to have relevant content in a category that Ask is spamming the heck out of Google in), but one nice thing about comparing Yahoo! and Bing against each other is that they are generally driven by the same relevancy algorithm. Of course Yahoo! and Bing may have different promotions added to their interfaces for certain query types, but if you take websites that are ranking for a wide basket of keywords you can generally see how the search engines are doing against each other at driving traffic.

Some categories (think mom from the mid-west who is a casual internet user) might have a bias toward using Yahoo! Search, but outside of areas where you might expect that sort of skew, I am seeing Bing drive more organic search traffic than Yahoo! is. Here are analytics images from 3 different websites so far this month that get quite a significant search traffic stream. These sites target different demographics from people in their 20's to 30's to 40's. And all 3 of them are getting more search visits from Bing than Yahoo! Search. And, looking at the data, this shift has been fairly significant over the past couple months.

This site gets tons of longtail traffic & ranks across a wide array of keyword.

This site is primarily driven by a few popular keywords & ranks #1 in both Bing and Google for them.

The reason this 3rd one is so Google heavy is because the Google algorithm likes the older site more & it does not have as many fresh links (which Bing seems to like more). It is primarily focused on a few core keywords where it ranks #1 to #3 in Google and #4 to #7 in Bing.

I suspect that Bing is still somewhat more selective with showing search ads than Yahoo! is (as Microsoft's online operation has been losing billions of Dollars per year & Bing is trying to win marketshare from Google, whereas Yahoo! is all about maximizing revenues per search). Yahoo! ads likely get a greater portion of the search clicks due to...

• ads being shown more frequently & more aggressively


• ads taking up more visual space (when Bing puts 4 ads above the organic results they put the URL and the description on the same line, whereas Yahoo! spreads them out across multiple lines)

Since Bing is sending more searchers onto the organic search results it means their real search share is over-represented if you look only at organic search visitors, but then as an SEO that is the main thing you are looking for - opportunity. It is a bit of a shame that on the above sites Google is still driving ~ 84% of search visitors, whereas Bing is still in the 16% range.

As Google comes over the top to bury the organic results by...

• expanding the default AdWords ad units to have longer headlines and a boatload of extensions


• entering broad consumer verticals like books and finance and offering customized local results


• running self serving ads in a bunch of categories like project management and even wedding planning

...they kill a lot of opportunity as their ecosystem becomes more closed and perverted.

If the trends hold true, then in some cases it seems like Google might drive SEOs below the fold for core keywords while still pushing strong traffic into tail. Bing still doesn't have the index depth to match Google's relevancy on longtail keywords, but at least they are not crowding out the organic results anywhere near as aggressively on core keywords.

How are you seeing Bing fare against Yahoo! & Google? Are you seeing growth from Bing? What sorts of sites are you seeing Bing do well on & what sorts of sites are you seeing Bing do poorly on?

Categories:

msn

"

Two Diametrically Opposed Google Editorial Philosophies

Two Diametrically Opposed Google Editorial Philosophies: "

An 'Algorithmic' Approach

When it comes to buying links, Google not only fights it with algorithms, but also ran a 5-year long FUD campaign, introduced nofollow as a proprietary filter, encouraged webmasters to rat on each other, and has engineers hunting for paid links. On top of that, Google's link penalties range from subtle to overt.

Google claims that they do not want to police low quality content by trying to judge intent, that doing so would not be scalable enough to solve the problem, & that they need to do it algorithmically. At the same time, Google is willing to manually torch some sites and basically destroy the associated businesses. Talk to enough SEOs and you will find stories of carnage - complete decimation.

Economics Drive Everything

Content farms are driven by economics. Make them unprofitable (rather than funding them) and the problem solves itself - just like Google AdWords does with quality scores. Sure you can show up on AdWords where you don't belong and/or with a crappy scam offer, but you are priced out of the market so losses are guaranteed. Hello $100 clicks!

How many content farms would Google need to manually torch to deter investment in the category? 5? Maybe 10? 20 tops? Does that really require a new algorithmic approach on a web with 10's of millions of websites?

When Google nuked a ton of article banks a few years back the damage was fairly complete and lasted a long time. When Google nuked a ton of web directories a few years back the damage was fairly complete and lasted a long time. These were done in sweeps where on day you would see 50 sites lose their toolbar PageRank & see a swan dive in traffic. Yet content farms are a sacred cow that need an innovated "algorithmic" approach.

One Bad Page? TORCHED

If they feel an outright ban would be too much, then they could even dial the sites down over time if they desired to deter them without immediately killing them. Some bloggers who didn't know any better got torched based on a single blog post:

The Forrester report discusses a recent “sponsored conversation” from Kmart, but I doubt whether mentions that even in that small test, Google found multiple bloggers that violated our quality guidelines and we took corresponding action. Those blogs are not trusted in Google’s algorithms any more.

One post and the ENTIRE SITE got torched.

An Endless Sea of Garbage

How many garbage posts have you seen on content farms?

When you look at garbage content there are hundreds of words on the page screaming 'I AM EXPLOITATIVE TRASH.' Yet when you look at links they are often embedded inline and there is little context to tell if the link is paid or not, and determine if the link was an organic reference or something that is paid for.

Why is it that Google is comfortable implying intent with links, but must look the other way when it comes to content?

Purchasing Distribution

Media is a game of numbers, and so content companies have various layers of quality they mix in to make it harder for Google to find signal from noise. Yahoo! has fairly solid content in their sports category, but then fluff it out with top 10 lists and such from Associated Content. Now Yahoo! is hoping they can offset lower quality with a higher level of personalization:

The Yahoo platform aims to draw from a user’s declared preferences, search items, social media and other sources to find and highlight the most relevant content, according to the people familiar with the matter. It will be available on Yahoo’s Web site, but is optimized to work as an app on tablets and smartphones, and especially on Google Android and Apple devices, they said.

AOL made a big splash when they bought TechCrunch for $25 million. When AOL's editorial strategy was recently leaked it highlighted how they promoted cross linking their channels to drive SEO strategy. And, since acquisition, TechCrunch has only scaled up on the volume of content they produce. In the last 2 days I have seen 2 advertorials on TechCrunch where the conflicting relationship was only mentioned *after* you read the post. One was a Google employee suggesting Wikipedia needs ads, and the other was some social commerce platform guy promoting the social commerce revolution occurring on Facebook.

Being at the heart of technology is a great source of link equity to funnel around their websites. TechCrunch.com already has over 25% as many unique linking domains as AOL.com does. One of the few areas that is more connected on the social graph than technology is politics. AOL just bought Huffington Post for $315 million. The fusion of political bias, political connections, celebrity contributors, and pushing a guy who promoted (an ultimately empty) promise of hope and change quickly gave the Huffington Post even more link equity than TechCrunch has.

Thus they have the weight to do all the things that good online journalism is known for, like ads so deeply embedded in content you can't tell them apart, off-topic paginated syndicated duplicate content and writing meaningless posts devoid of content based on Google Trends data. As other politically charged mainstream media outlets have shown, you don't need to be factually correct (or even attempt honesty) so long as your bias is consistent.

Ultimately this is where Google's head in the sand approach to content farms backfired. When content farms were isolated websites full of trash Google could have nuked them without much risk. But now that their is a blended approach and content farms are part of public companies backed by politically powerful individuals, Google can't do anything about them. Their hands are tied.

Trends in Journalism

Much like the middle class has been gutted in the United States, Ireland (and pretty much everywhere that is not Iceland) by economic policies that gut the average person to promote banking criminals, we are seeing the same thing happen online to the value of any type of online journalism. As we continue to ask people to do more for less we suffer through a lower quality user experience with more half-content that leaves out the essential bits.

How to build a brick wall:

• step 1: get some bricks


• step 2: stack them in your workplace


• step 3: build the brick wall

The other thing destroying journalism is not only lean farms competing against thick and inefficient organizations for distribution, but also Google pushing to control more distribution via their various data grabs: Youtube video & music, graphical CPA ads in the search results, lead generation ads in the search results, graphic AdSense ads on publisher sites that drive searches into those lead generation funnels, grouping like data from publishers above the organic search results, offering branded navigational aids above the organic search results, acquiring manufacturer data, scraping 3rd party reviews, buying sentiment analysis tools, promoting Google maps everywhere, Google product pages & local review pages, extended ad units, etc. If most growth in journalism is based on SEO & Google is systematically eating the search results, then at some point that bubble will get pricked and there will be plenty of pain to go around.

My guess is that in 3 to 4 years the search results become so full of junk that Google pushes hard to rank chunks of ebooks wrapped in Google ads directly in the search results. Books are already heavily commoditized (it's amazing how much knowledge you can get for $10 or $20), and given that Google already hard-codes their ebooks in the search results, it is not a big jump for them to work on ad deals that pull publishers in. It follows the trend elsewhere 'Free Music Can Pay as Well as Paid Music, YouTube Says.'

It's Not All Bad

The silver lining there is that if you are the employer your margins may grow, but if you are an employee & are just scraping by on $10 an hour then it increases the importance of doing something on the side to lower your perceived risk & increase your influence. A few years back Marshall Kirkpatrick started out on AOL's content farms. The tips he shared to stand out would be a competitive advantage in almost any vertical outside of technology & politics:

one day Michael Arrington called and hired me at TechCrunch. 'You keep beating us to stories,' he told me. I was able to do that because I was getting RSS feeds from key vendors in our market delivered by IM and SMS. That's standard practice among tech bloggers now, but at the time no one else was doing it, so I was able to cover lots of news first.

Three big tips from the 'becoming a well known writer front' for new writers are...

• if short form junk content is the standard then it is easier to stand out by creating long form well edited content


• it is easier to be a big fish in a small pond than to try to get well known in a saturated area, so it is sometimes better to start working for niche publishers that have a strong spot in a smallish niche


• if you want to target the bigger communities the most important thing to them (and the thing they are most likely to talk about) are themselves

Another benefit to publishers is that as the web becomes more polluted people will become far more likely to pay to access better content and smaller + tighter communities.

Prioritizing User Feedback?

On a Google blog post about web spam they state the following:

Spam reports are prioritized by looking at how much visibility a potentially spammy site has in our search results, in order to help us focus on high-impact sites in a timely manner. For instance, we’re likely to prioritize the investigation of a site that regularly ranks on the first or second page over that of a site that only gets a few search impressions per month.

Given the widely echoed complaints on content farms, it seems Google has a different approach on content farms, especially considering that the top farms are seen by millions of searchers every month.

Implying Intent

If end users can determine when links are paid (with limited context) then why not trust their input on judging the quality of the content as well? The Google Toolbar has a PageRank meter for assessing link authority. Why not add a meter for publisher reputation & content quality? I can hear people saying "people will use it to harm competitors" but I have also seen websites torched in Google because a competitor went on a link buying spree on behalf of their fellow webmaster. At least if someone gives you a bad rating for great content then the content still has a chance to defend its own quality.

With link stuff there is a final opinion and that is it. Not only are particular techniques of varying levels of risk, but THE prescribed analysis of intent depends on who is doing it!

A Google engineer saw an SEO blog about our affiliate program passing link juice and our affiliate links stopped passing weight. (I am an SEO so the appropriate intent is spam). Then something weird happened. A few months later a Google engineer *publicly* stated that affiliate links should count. A few years later Google invested in a start up which turns affiliate links into direct links while hiding the paid compensation in the background. (Since Google is doing it the intent is NOT spam).

Implying Ignorance

Some of the content mills benefit from the benefit-of-doubt. Jason Calacanis lied repeatedly about 'experimental pages' and other such nonsense. But when his schemes were highlighted he was offered the benefit of the doubt. eHow also enjoys that benefit of the doubt. It doesn't matter that Demand Media's CEO was the chairman of an SEO consulting company which sold for hundreds of millions of Dollars. What matters is the benefit of the doubt (even if his company flagrantly violates quality guidelines by doing bulk 301 redirects of EXPIRED domains into eHow ... something where a lesser act can put you up for vote on a Google engineer's blog for public lynching).

The algorithm. They say. It has opinions.

What Other Search Engines Are Doing

A Bing engineer accused Google of funding web pollution. Blekko invites end users to report spam in their index, and the first thing end-users wanted booted out was the content mills.

But Google need to be "algorithmic" when the problems are obvious and smack them in the face. And they need to "imply intent" where the problems are less problematic & nowhere near as overt.

Makes sense, almost!

Categories:

google

publishing & media

"