Long, long ago in 2003, Miles Burke was mourning the Lost Art of Conversation and wondering how it could be encouraged. Since then things have gone from bad to worse. Online forums, the natural home for conversations, seem to have a questionable future as John Carcutt points out. There certainly is a decline in conversations as opposed to chats and instant messages.

As we will show, there are two main reasons for this happening. The first is a natural phenomenon, while the second is a result of actions by one major player. The natural phenomenon is that the Internet brings with it incredible connectivity. Everyone can connect with everyone, provided they choose to do so. If they wish, they can also broadcast to the world in real time any significant happenings in what some call their Life Stream.

The Life Stream

One of the oldest and most popular is Twitter. Your life can be recounted in a series of short (140 characters) Tweats (newslets) to any of your friends who are watching. It certainly is difficult to have a meaty discussion in such short tweats. Somewhat ironically, a Twitter competitor Jaiku, now owned by Google, is titled Your Conversation. It will shortly be open to all and describes itself as your own microblog.

Perhaps the best illustration of the nature of these life streams is provided by another newcomer, Plurk. Its display looks very much like a river.

As time passes, we move downstream to the left and see the comments of those we have chosen to follow. It’s almost like logs floating down a river. If you wish you can jump onto such a log and add your own comment. It can be amusing but it’s hardly a conversation.

Many are finding this plethora of social media where you can stay connected is overwhelming. Merely staying in touch can eat up a great deal of time. There’s hardly any time left to have any meaningful conversations. This is the natural phenomenon that we talked about.

Google’s First Blow To Conversations

Google is a powerful influence in the way things happen on the Internet. It has taken two major initiatives that have affected both the quantity and quality of the conversations that were occurring. The first is that its highly successful keyword search algorithm gives a major weighting to (hyper)links that point to web pages. Since this was widely known, this opened the floodgate to spammy comments on blogs seeking only to be given a link back to the author’s web page. This was so prevalent that some blog owners would block all comments to avoid this. Overall the Google algorithm has caused a significant reduction in the average quality of web conversations.

Google’s Second Blow to Conversations

The second Google initiative was a natural follow-on to their first. Noting that many website owners would pay others to create links to their websites, Google wished to block this. So they introduced the NoFollow tag. They insisted that anyone who created a page link to another web page for monetary gain should mark that link with the NoFollow tag. In this way, the search robots would disregard the link and it would count for nothing in the keyword search algorithm. The merit and efficacy of this approach for treating paid links could certainly be questioned.

What is more questionable is then using this NoFollow tag in a blanket way to devalue all comments on blogs. Spam comments on blogs are indeed a problem. Google suggested that it should be applied to all blog comments. Wordpress now adopts this as the default position. However unless there is some incentive for a genuine commenter to add a useful comment, it is unlikely to happen. As noted earlier, the flood of new social media leaves little time to add a blog comment that may be read by very few. Another approach is needed here.

Fighting Back With DoFollow

David Harry has pointed out the absurdity of this approach in his Monday morning rant this week.

It is a sad statement on the times
It’s a damned funny preposition really if we think about it. At its core Google is a nodal/link based algorithm that depends largely on the links of the web to establish popularity and to a certain degree, value. Now, what if…. by some strange twist of fate, the majority of the world’s webmasters and site owners decided to Nofollow all of their outbound links in a sort of, ‘better safe than sorry’ manoeuvre?

If more worthwhile conversations are to be encouraged on the Web, then some different approach is needed. If comments are to be accorded links, then there must be a strong process in place to avoid giving value to worthless posts created only for links. Many are now adopting this approach and you can find some of these listed in the following:

• “Do Follow” Blog Directory
• Do Follow List Of Lists
• Courtney Tuttle’s D-List

Tougher Love For Blog Commenters

This Dofollow policy has been running for the SMM blogs for two months now and there has been a very slight increase in the spam comments. Perhaps too many are assuming that comments of little value to subsequent readers will be acceptable. You might assume that from what Digerati Marketing says about its Over 160 Relevant Link Following Blogs.

Even for white hatters, I don’t think there’s an ethical issue here. So we’re putting our comment there for the sole purpose of getting a link, yes. However, if the blog author can read this comment and they think it adds value to the post, where’s the harm in that? If bloggers are so concerned about who they are giving their link juice to, they should be using the nofollow attribute in the first place.

The SMM policy sets out to deliver best value to our readers. Unless a blog comment is helping that aim, it will be deleted. Merely leaving the blog comment there with a NoFollow tag is the worst of all possible approaches.

Related:
We DoFollow And Remove NoFollow From Comment Links

Other Related Posts

• April 5, 2008 -- We DoFollow And Remove NoFollow From Comment Links

The Internet continues to get ever more crowded. Google is continually modifying its algorithms and its ways of presenting more personalized results to searchers. It’s no surprise that many feel that SEO, or organic search engine optimization, is getting increasingly difficult. That’s the view you’ll see in many forums. Just check a discussion at Cre8asite Forums for confirmation. It was titled ‘Been Reading That SEO Is Slowly Dying / Changing‘.

A coming SMM newsletter will discuss the state of the nation on SEO. As always, the aim is to create something useful for our readers but also create a memorable and search visible item. As we have recommended, potential titles were checked in both a Google Web search and a Google Blogsearch. The results were intriguing.

One possibility was the notion of a SEO Cash Cow. That kind of talk has not been around for some time. Back in 2006, a website offering SEO Cash Cows claims that all packages were sold out within 15 days of launch. Early in 2007. you could still find other sites that would help you build your cash cow or would turn your website into a cash cow. Since then, the Internet seems somewhat quiet on the subject of cash cows.

Another possible phrase to draw the eye might be fat cow. This seems to be in more current usage. That’s because of the efforts of Garry Conn with his John Cow dot Com website. His tagline is Making Money Online by Milking the Internet. Of course to an extent he is riding on the coattails of the much better known John Chow dot Com website. John Chow is a resident of Vancouver and and has the tagline, I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online. It was visible on the fat cow query, because of a little sniping at John Chow from Garry Conn. Whether the efforts of either of these gentlemen and their interactions can be regarded as examples of fat cows or cash cows that others might wish to copy is open to question.

Clearly something is happening and webmasters must adjust. Perhaps the final word should go to John Mueller, one of the more visible Googlers who is always delivering eminently good sense, in his post on that Cre8asite Forums thread.

If you “fall” for a product/service that doesn’t deliver close to the expectations that they set in their marketing, you’re not going to fall for it a second (or at least a third time). If a search engine notices that it’s falling for content that doesn’t deliver close to the expectations set with regards to SEO, it’s going to work on recognizing and ignoring that. If you constantly have to adjust your SEO efforts because the search engines aren’t falling for it anymore, perhaps the problem is not the SEO.

What seems quite clear is that SEO is no longer a license to print money. There are increasing challenges which the successful practitioner of SEO must overcome. However, the ROI (return on investment) will still well reward the effort.

Posts You May Like From The Archives

• August 3, 2007 -- Google Does A Harry Potter On Its Gphones
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NoFollow is one of the most contentious tags around. That is because Google has suggested it be applied to all paid links from web pages. It does have a more acceptable usage in attempting to remove the incentive for spammers to add comments to blogs. That is why Wordpress automatically applies the NoFollow tag to links in comments.

Matt Cutts has set out the Google position on the NoFollow tag, and it certainly does not imply that all comments should have the NoFollow tag applied. Recently John Mueller was one of the Google experts in an online chat and the NoFollow tag came up in the discussion. This is followed up in a Cre8asite Forum discussion on When To Remove Nofollow From Blog Comments. For both Elizabeth Able and Donna Fontenot, removing the NoFollow tag selectively seemed to be a preferred route. They recommended using the Lucia’s Linky Love plugin. This can be set so that the NoFollow tags are removed after a visitor has made a certain number of comments.

In researching this, the WordPress Codex provides an explanation of Nofollow. Here is some of what is mentioned:

Despite nofollow’s Google backing, there is some very strong criticism from the overall blog community.

• Prepare for more comment spam, not less
• NoNoFollow
• DoFollow No Nofollow Community has been established on Bumpzee, as a means for people to find information on Nofollow / DoFollow and find other blogs in the same niche with which to interact.

To disable nofollow, use one of the following plugins:

• DoFollow
• Follow URL

An excellent and more complete discussion of the issue is given by Andy Beard in his Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins. After reading all this we settled for the tried-and-true DoFollow plug-in mentioned in the WordPress Codex.

SMM DoFollow Policy

Our policy is to encourage more valuable comments by offering their authors ‘linkjuice‘. This is more generous than the approach of the Lucia’s Linky Love plugin. At the same time, we accept the burden of removing spam comments. The Akismet plugin already does a good job of removing most spam comments. Other comments are deleted if it is felt that they do not merit being seen by other readers of the blogs. If it is felt that a commenter has written a comment merely to gain a link, then all his comments will be carefully scrutinised and may be deleted. It’s a kind of Tough Love policy but hopefully everyone wins.

Other Related Posts

• June 10, 2008 -- Who Killed Conversations?
• May 20, 2008 -- A Very Easy WordPress Tag Cloud Web Page
• February 10, 2008 -- Fast Alarm For Hidden WordPress Hackers

Bill Meisel, president of TMA Associate and the non-profit Applied Voice Input Output Society arranged the Voice Search Conference held in San Diego, California, March 10-12. One question posed there, according to Usability News, was Will Voice Search be THE Usability Breakthrough for Mobile Phones?

The dilemma according to Meisel is:

It’s not unusual for user interfaces to get “stuck” on one model. The layout of keyboards hasn’t changed for decades, for example, despite some efforts to make it easier to use (by putting oft-used letters under the strongest fingers). The telephone’s 12-button keypad is similarly persistent. Persistence of the user interface is a major barrier to increased use of mobile devices beyond communication.

He believes that “voice search” will come to dominate mobile phones. He has some powerful companies who share his view: just think Google, Microsoft and Nuance to name but three. This is an idea whose time has come.

Other Related Posts

• April 2, 2008 -- Keep Your Snoopy Eyes On The Road Ahead
• February 15, 2008 -- Voice Recognition Technology To Stop Hospital Cross-Infections
• January 19, 2008 -- Fingerless Cell Phones

“Yahoo Racing Ahead of Google in Asia’s Mobile Race?” was the question raised in June 2007. For its mobile search service Yahoo! oneSearch, which it then launched in seven Asian countries, including India, Yahoo! was targeting a subscriber base of 100 million through various partnerships. The article raised the question whether Yahoo could manage to stay ahead of Google in the mobile race in Asia. Clearly Yahoo has other things on its mind at the moment.

A much more important victory is heralded by this week’s headline, Google Wins Japan’s Mobile Net Battle. (Hat tip to Lee Messenger of Cre8asite Forums for that.) It suggests that the company’s deals with NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, Japan’s two biggest wireless carriers, have cemented its lead in mobile search. The article does point out that in the long run, the search companies and the carriers have interests that diverge more dramatically. The carriers want to channel subscribers through a proprietary Net gateway using proprietary browser software on mobile phones so they can charge subscribers for services, not just airtime. That’s at odds with Google’s mission: to give everyone Net access and make the online experience on a mobile device virtually indistinguishable from that on a PC.

Another important stage of the race is opening up with Voice Search. Voice Search is poorly understood. What will speech technology support? What applications do customers want? What will they pay for and how viable are ads in voice-search applications? The Voice Search Conference will be held in San Diego, March 10 - 12, 2008, to address these issues. Needless to say this is another area where Google is strongly represented.

As John Roese, CTO Nortel, muses as he returns from the Mobile World Congress 2008 – Oh, what a difference a year can make a:

You cannot consider wireless networks without including the carrier VoIP market, which is the agreed-upon method that will be used to make voice and real-time communications possible in these new networks. And you cannot consider the fate and shape of the wireless industry without including IT companies like Microsoft and Google and technology companies like Apple in the total view of the industry.

To boldly go where no man has gone before: that’s the Mobile Web. .. and Google must be a strong favorite in that amazing race.

Other Related Posts

• June 5, 2008 -- Talk To Your Bank For Added Security
• April 15, 2008 -- Mobile Web Dead - No, It’s Ubiquitous
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Spotting the intrusion was a matter of complete luck. I was involved in creating a new page for the blog. Reviewing the source code for the blog, which I almost never did, showed extra code had been added. Later it turned out this had happened only a few hours prior to that source code review.

More information on all this can be found in another blog post at BPWrap entitled Wordpress Blog Hacked. It’s information that all WordPress bloggers should be aware of.

Related: Matt Cutts: Three tips to protect your WordPress installation

Other Related Posts

• February 10, 2008 -- Fast Alarm For Hidden WordPress Hackers
• May 20, 2008 -- A Very Easy WordPress Tag Cloud Web Page
• April 5, 2008 -- We DoFollow And Remove NoFollow From Comment Links

Tom Spring of PC World was able to do a matched comparison. In his opinion, the result currently is a draw. Both services delivered the correct result, with Google taking a little longer since it repeats the request for confirmation. He has an interesting comment that the Google service is much simpler while the Microsoft service is slightly confusing in offering more choices. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this mirrors how both approach the regular keyword search. Google has that beautifully simple search page. Microsoft usually offers search within a portal page that flags the other services they have available.

It would be interesting to know whether either or both do user tests in deciding which format they will follow. Usability or the science of creating satisfactory user experiences regrettably does not receive the attention it should. Watching how typical users complete tasks as they use a particular service or website is an easy way to confirm that the best choices are being made. Given the expense of creating such services, it would seem foolhardy not to spend the limited extra dollars involved in checking whether the users think you have it right.

Related:
GOOG-411, A Harbinger Of The Mobile Web
GOOG-411 or CALL-411 - Voice-actuated Mobile Web
BTW, Live Search 411 Is Taking On GOOG 411

Other Related Posts

• March 15, 2008 -- Voice Search On Mobile Phones For A Better User Experience
• October 20, 2007 -- Microsoft Outdoes Google In Voice Mobile Search
• May 28, 2008 -- Website Reviews Free, Really?

Perhaps it’s not surprising to see this flurry of activity. In a recent interview, Bill Gates confirmed that he will be involved in only a handful of priority projects from now on. However voice technology is one he puts particular emphasis on. That’s good news. The mobile web is to an extent held back by the poor usability of mobile devices. Most mobile devices have good voice technology. It’s clear that voice recognition technology is a strong contender for delivering better user experiences.

Other Related Posts

• April 2, 2008 -- Keep Your Snoopy Eyes On The Road Ahead
• March 15, 2008 -- Voice Search On Mobile Phones For A Better User Experience
• February 15, 2008 -- Voice Recognition Technology To Stop Hospital Cross-Infections

We recently announced that AnswerTips Comes To BPWrap, our associated blog. We’ve been so pleased at how well AnswerTips performs that we’ve added it here too (top right) and on the other SMM properties. We think it’s a very neat gizmo and all credit is due to Answer.com .. oops that should read Answers.com. The gizmo has since then been removed in an upgrade of the websites.

You see in telling the world we did say Courtesy of Answer.com. Our error was quickly pointed out to us by Marjolein Hoekstra of the CleverClogs Blog and by Gina Larson of Answers.com. The CleverClogs Blog was one of the beta testing websites for the AnswerTips gizmo. Within minutes the correction was made and the news feed aggregators repinged. However for a short time Google and others were working with that Answer.com version of the title.

Perhaps the mistake was a natural one. I decided to do some exploring. It reminds me of a related domain. Some were concerned as Ask Jeeves sacked Jeeves and became the simple Ask.com. What a great domain name that is. I for one always felt that it was almost a no-brainer to go with simplicity. Of course you should Ask your questions. As far as one can tell it has been a very positive move. An alternative way of responding to questions is to give an Answer. So Answer.com would seem to be an ideal domain to do this. Surprisingly typing in www.answer.com currently gives a Server Not Found message. The domain does exist as a Internic WhoIs search will confirm with the following information:

Domain Name: ANSWER.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: GATEWAY1.PLATINUM.COM
Name Server: GATEWAY2.PLATINUM.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 26-jun-2006
Creation Date: 27-feb-1992
Expiration Date: 28-feb-2008

Why would someone sit on such a fine domain name?

Doing a Google search for “answer.com” gives over 90,000 web pages. Some of these are composite domain names that include answer.com. However many show that precise domain name, answer.com. Even if there is no active website at that domain, many mistakenly think so. Perhaps it’s only a small surprise to find that the #1 item in this search is the Answers.com website. There is no mention of ‘answer.com’ on the answers.com website but the Google cache shows that it appears in links to the website. Try the same search in Yahoo!, MSN/Live or Ask and you’ll get the same answer. Perhaps in our confusion I and many others have helped spread the illusion that, if you type answer.com, you really intended to find the answers.com website.

People now a days don’t often type in a domain in the address bar. They more often type the name in the Google search field. Or they click on a favourite link. This tendency will be even stronger as people use their cell phones to surf the mobile Web.

Does this mean the value of these shorter domains will be reduced? They really will not bring the traffic they used to. At this time, the keyword “answer.com” would seem to be the property of Answers.com, at least in the eyes of the major search engines. Given my satisfaction with Answers.com for their AnswerTips, I think they’ve earned that answer.com visibility.

Related:
Should Your Domain Name Be Monday?
SWOT That Company Name

Posts You May Like From The Archives

• April 15, 2008 -- Mobile Web Dead - No, It’s Ubiquitous
• January 3, 2008 -- Mobile 2008 - Year Of The Google
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As the mobile web expands explosively, it is clear that search and particularly local search on mobile devices including cell phones is a mountain of gold. All the major players on the mobile web want to get the biggest share of the gold they can.

Two groups start with advantages here. Clearly the Telcos may feel they’re in the driving seats. However when one thinks of search, names such as Google and Yahoo come to mind. A third group has historically been involved and that’s the online Yellow Pages services.

In this pitched battle, it might appear that the one to beat is Google. Google has almost owned the search world as visited through desktop PCs. Does this mean that they will be the inevitable winner in this even more important war?

Let’s consider the reasons for Google’s success.

• An effective search algorithm
• Weak opposition
• Well resourced to index the web rapidly and deliver results fast
• Very simple user interface

It should be noted that these apply to regular search. In local search, it’s a very much more open contest and Google hasn’t yet developed a competition-crushing solution. Since local search will be the biggest application by far on the mobile web, this makes for a very much more even competition.

This lack of Google dominance seems to be confirmed by news that the Telcos are secretly plotting a mobile search alternative to Google. As the Chinese would say, we’re in for interesting times. As the Chinese are the biggest travellers on the mobile web, perhaps they may have a big influence on how the war goes.

Related:
Comscore’s mobile search findings

Tags: Mobile, local search

Posts You May Like From The Archives

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