This Blog does not use rel=”nofollow”

I just installed a plugin to this blog to remove the default behavior to add the nofollow tag to all URLs that a commenter writes.

The nofollow tag was intended to reduce SPAM comments on blogs because it removes the incentive to post these spam comments. Google rates a page largely by the number of links from other web pages to it. The nofollow tag, that is added to a link as rel=”nofollow,” indicated to Google, not to count this link. After this, why would a blackhat SEO add a spam comment to a blog if that link would not help him to reach his objective to rank higher?

In theory that worked, but it had a side effect. Real commenters, who would have added value to a blog by commenting good comments, also stayed away because they also had lost the benefit to get link popularity. They went away to other methods of getting in-bound links. Or they went to blogs that did not have that nofollow tag set on their commenter’s contributions.

I use the plugin Nofollow Free to remove nofollow tags from comment links. It is configurable in that you can choose to remove each and every nofollow tag, or only those of registered users, and you can create a blacklist of words that would trigger to add the nofollow tag again - the male enhancer pill with a V is probably a good member for that field.

Posted by Merlin - April 12th, 2008

Feb

6

Searching for the Most Intelligent Guy on the Web

Filed under Internet, Marketing | Leave a Comment

About a year ago I made this experiment in SEO to see how with a - admittedly - not very often used search term I can dominate the search engines. So I posted this blog post about the most intelligent guy on the whole web and got it to rank #1 on Google quickly.

But today, when checking out something at Google’s webmaster tools I noticed that the link to this post generated a 404 error - oops! It took me a while to notice what was different in the URL that worked and the one that did not. A little sub-directory /blog/ - I had moved Wordpress from it’s directory /blog/ down to the root of the web site.

The whole thing turned out to be a false alarm because Google had also indexed the later version of the site without the /blog/ and the page was found just fine. But as I was already looking into this I thought why not revisit the issue and strengthen my position as the most important guy on the internet and everywhere else.

So, yes, if you ended up here on this page then you probably - for whatever sick reason - searched for the this one totally smart guy on the web. I suppose you were hoping to find your name - sorry - but that position is taken by your’s truly Merlin G. Silk!

So, I would suggest you get a life and do something constructive.

C Ya!

Posted by Merlin Silk - February 6th, 2008

Jan

31

Scientology, Hackers and Controversy

Filed under Fun Stuff, Internet | Leave a Comment

A few days ago the Hackers Anonymous declared war on the Church of Scientology, and today the internet is in a buzz about an apparent Google bombing. If you don’t know what Google bombing is: it’s ganging up of many - mostly bloggers - to all link to a specific page with the same text. For example a while ago a Google bomb was launched on George Bush’s bio page with the words “total failure,” but since then Google patched that hole and Google bombs became at least difficult. For reaching a top ranking now Google required the words that link to the site to appear within that site. So as long as George’s bio page did not contain the words ‘total ‘and ‘failure,’ he would not be a total failure (my wording was intended.)

But today when you search for ‘dangerous cult’ the top result was the Scientology main site www.Scientology.org.

Dangerous Cult Scientology Church

Search Engine Land was not sure if that really was a Google bomb as the Scientology front page does not - certainly - contain the word ‘cult’ even though it does contain the word ‘dangerous.’ Another fact that supported that doubt was, that only some three hundred sites could be found that pointed to the Scientology site with the text ‘dangerous cult.’

And here is where the real power of the internet comes in. When I did the search on Yahoo

linkdomain:scientology.org “dangerous cult”

I got over 1400 hits. In other words, since that article on Search Engine Land was written, which might have been a few hours before I read it, more than 1000 other people picked up this story and wrote/blogged about it. If it has not been a Google bomb so far, it was now. And I am certainly proud to participate by supplying a link to a dangerous cult as well.

I know the Cof$ from the inside but I have to admit that I just love this power of the ‘Don’t mess with us!’ There are just more and more sites like this about the Delphi Academy of Los Angeles as a recruiting base springing up that it can’t be stopped centrally. It’s guerrilla warfare the Cof$ is involved in now and history has shown that such a war can not be won.

Posted by Merlin Silk - January 31st, 2008