A fascinating move by Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) that appears punitive for blog networks excessively crosslinking (B5Media and AOL/Weblogs) as well as some of the bloggers and, get this, mainstream media sites, who sell text links and don’t use rel=nofollow or JavaScript. Some are speculating that this is also being extended to paid reviews and paid to blog sites.

Just check out a couple of well-known sites that had their page rank downgraded:

(AOL/WIN) Engadget - PR7 to PR5
(AOL/WIN) Joystiq - PR6 to PR4
(AOL/WIN) AutoBlog - PR6 to PR4
(B5) Problogger - PR6 to PR4
Search Engine Journal - PR7 to PR4

And I’m sure you’ve heard of these sites:

Seattle Times - PR6 to PR4
Forbes - PR7 to PR5
Washington Times - PR6 to PR4

Notes: daily blog tips has more. Andy Beard who founded the NoNofollow group at Bumpzee has a nice write-up on the topic with a few more listed. Andy’s Page Rank was slashed awhile back and is a PayPerPost blogger.

Curious if former frontman of Weblogs, Inc, Jason Calacanis, has weighed in on this situation? Nothing on his blog as of this writing, nothing in his Twitter stream. He’s not on Skype at the moment or I’d ping him there. I’d like to know how he feels about this since he was a direct beneficiary in the sale to AOL of network crosslinking. Check the comments below. Maybe he’ll leave an answer there.

Acquistion by AOL not the case for the B5Media network, they have to weather the storm. Except for Duncan Riley who managed to get through a post at his TechCrunch writing gig entitled “Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms” without mentioning he used to be one of the partners at B5Media and departed somewhat suddenly.

Lately B5Media CEO Jeremy Wright’s personal blog (PR4 now, don’t know what it was formerly) is filled with daily unrelated Twitter updates (offtopic: lame, can’t people just follow these on Twitter, Jeremy?), no word on the B5Media blog about this Google situation either. B5Media company line is silence? I doubt that. When I interviewed Jeremy about B5Media last year it struck me that they had some good things planned over there. Is this a noteworthy setback?

Darren Rowse puzzledly addresses the issue in the comments section of his Problogger blog:

At b5 we link to other blogs in a channel in our sidebars - so that people can find more content on similar topics - it’s about giving readers more content that they can use and showing them what else we do. If it helps with SEO I guess I could see why they might disallow the power of such links - but to penalize for them is a little bizarre as they are a legit part of our business of showing people where they can read more content that we produce.

Is Darren legitimately confused or naive? Nepotism links on blog networks are essentially crosslink spam in the eyes of search engines. These links have been touted as a benefit for buildinig and running a blog network. It’s how crappy blogs like the ironically titled spam blog at Weblogs, Inc made the original CNET top 100 list, but were later replaced when CNET readers complained.

Fewer, higher quality blogs in blog network seems like better strategy
The Gawker blog network (Lifehacker, Gawker, Valleywag and others) seems to have a philosophy of fewer, higher quality blogs make a better overall network, but even they’ve had to shutter some blogs (Sploid, Screenhead) in the past.

B5Media is boasting over 290 blogs and 10 million unique visitors a month. Gawker does a lot more traffic than that with a dozen or so blogs. AOL has more traffic too, but with a number of blogs somewhere in the middle. Different blog network strategies.

Is it right for Google to punish sites that sell links passing PR?
I’m going to do something unusual in this post. Instead of giving you my opinion on this question, I’m going to request yours and carefully digest the answers. Long time readers know I’m not a big fan of blog networks and how writers work is treated (undervalued like most of the publishing industry), but this issue goes beyond blog networks.

I’m going to talk to other webmasters and bloggers in further depth on the issue. Let’s discuss this in the comments below, on Twitter, in your blogs, your place or mine, whatever.

Obviously these PR penalties are having no financial impact on Google. And some people are saying that the Page Rank isn’t that important any longer. Several of the sites having their PR reduced are fans of Google and follow their every move. Hmm, indeed!

In a post titled “Sleazy Linkers Lose An Ally” Jeremy Wagstaff describes there being a “groundswell building against internal links” fingering Valleywag, Techcrunch, Mashable and other tech blogs of linking on the words of companies, sites and service leading to internal site pages. He ends his acrimonious post with:

What to do? Maybe a name-and-shame list until these recalcitrants start respecting the intelligence of their readers?

Blog Mccarthyism? Please. Before sharing some actual reader benefits of a site internal linking let me remind you of the most popular worst site on the internet for internal linking: Wikipedia. None of the blog posts I read cited Wikipedia as an example of internal links run amok. Ever been to an article there and wanted to visit the source and found yourself in a maze of internal links trying to find .. the … external … link? And yet look how Google and other search engines continue to idolize Wikipedia. It’s no wonder that some other sites are taking this practice to extremes.

And now for my own disclaimer. I’m guilty of being in this dark, “sleazy” club for internal linking on site names. Did this terrible deed here in two separate posts recently with AmazonMP3 and Zecco instead of linking to AmazonMP3.com and Zecco.com respectively. Before striking up torches, you should know that I’m not trying to do this as any kind of disservice to readers. Quite the opposite actually. Remember, writers are readers too.

Let’s consider the facts first. I removed banner ads from this site in September which took away 10-15% from the bottom line of this site. There are currently no ads running on this site that we get paid for by page views (CPM). They’re all cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA).

Absolutely yes, I’d like readers to stop by and read more than one page before leaving. I’m hoping they’ll become subscribers and want to stick around and figure out this whole web thing together. And you know what, if they come to trust and like me over time, maybe we’ll do business someday. What comes around goes around. And if I write about something and mark it as an affiliate link and readers want to sign up and cut me in on a few $$ they wouldn’t see anyway, what’s wrong with that?

All site visitors that aren’t trying to do something malicious at the site are valuable to me, but I’ll freely admit those who are just passing through to click on the first link they see and leave are not as valuable as people who leave comments, get involved, subscribe and/or write about posts made here from their blogs. The fact that I’ve taken a few minutes in the wee hours of a Saturday morning to address Jeremy’s post in detail should be evidence that I care. If I mention AmazonMP3 in passing in a post on Apple iTunes, which is more helpful to readers: linking to the past post with an easy to find link or linking directly to AmazonMP3.com? Hopefully those who care about what I have to say and do, will understand the link I chose was there for a good reason, not intended to manipulate them or the search engines.

Searching for the best linking convention
Admittedly, I’m still working through linking conventions — and I’m working on completing year five of this blog and over 10 years as a webmaster — but I want to make it easier to identify links by linking the domain name rather than the name. To me if it’s the domain in the link text it should always be linked to the domain. I’m not convinced that using the name by itself, however, should always be treated the same way. Again, I point to Wikipedia. Do a little digging around subjects there and then compare. They not only have names linked internally but even the logos of companies linked internally on pages about the companies: like Microsoft. There does come a point when linking too much is bad and I think in cases like this, the Wikipedia goes overboard.

And you bet I added rel=nofollow to that link, touche for Wikipedia that adds rel=NOFOLLOW to all links on their site. The don’t think it’s important enough to help the search engines see the sources they use to build articles. Roach motel.

It’s not all transitory
New readers should be able to understand a bit of the history written on the site about each of the sites, products and services mentioned. Otherwise, why am I writing about these things at all? Just to be a point for people to stop by for a few seconds and leave to the other sites? Is it all just transitory?

Not always.

Isn’t it possible, Jeremy and others who despise this practice, that it’s actually helpful backstory to link to a prior review with screenshots or detailed text entry that fully describes a company and what it does — and in that post prominently link — to the subject website? Like how would you know how I feel about Zecco? Am I affiliated with the company somehow? Have I signed up for the service? How long have I been using it? What is my stake in writing about them, if any? You can only put so much backstory in each new post. I think it’s insulting your regular readers intelligence and irritating to keep repeating the same information instead of linking to it when relevant. No, not internal linking every time you mention a company’s name like Wikipedia, not even in every other post about a company, but when you’d like to give readers a chance to read more of the backstory and the history is relevant.

Here’s a sobering reality: an increasing number of sites I’ve written about and linked to aren’t on the web any more. This creates an operational issue for me: do I go back and remove the linkrot when something has dramatically changed? Leave it alone?

As a reader, I find it disappointing when a search engine leads me to a blog post or article about a site that is so short that I have to visit the external site to understand the context of the piece the search engine linked — only the link is now dead, so I’m off to the Wayback Machine or Google cache to try and figure out what it’s all about. Who really provided me any service? The blog/article site could have by providing more detail and history. That’s where the Wikipedia has thrived because they’ve created a more permanent experience.

Why longevity will be the new black on the internet
Longevity will be the new black on the internet, mark my words.

Blogs are riddled with dead links (including, regrettably a growing number here). So by linking to a main review or central page, bloggers are actually providing some sort of context to new visitors from search engines and they are also helping themselves to keep their archives updated and organized. I write detailed reviews for a couple reasons, one of which is I expect the review to have some sort of longevity. It’s also easier for me to return to one page and update that with the changes than updating dozens. That is a helpful service for readers.

With all that said, I’ll concede being frustrated with sites that excessively internally link for non altruistic means. Just wanted to point out that it is not that black and white though which Jeremy’s post doesn’t take into account. If it was, Google wouldn’t have assigned so much importance to Wikipedia, the most incestuous site on the internet for internal linking.

In 1998 a university professor from North Carolina created a site that focused on providing exhaustive descriptions of how stuff works.

Nine years later, Discovery, the folks behind Animal Planet and Discovery Channel are paying $250 million for all those juicy Google search results.

Acquiring HowStuffWorks will give Discovery the online firepower it has been lacking, Mr. Zaslav says. He wants to make the site, which draws about 3.8 million unique U.S. users a month, according to comScore Media Metrix, the foundation of Discovery’s digital push. HowStuffWorks says it has 11 million users globally.

A search query at this blog for ‘howstuffworks.com’ results in two links, the most recent link in February on how beer goggles work (pictured) and the first link in August 2003 showing how mood rings work. HowStuffWorks is a good site with solid content. It’s nice to see a payday for a site with good content.

IP Democracy digs deeper into Discovery’s plans, which will focus on video specifically:

HowStuffWorks is planning to embed videos from Discovery’s various channels as well as serve as an oulet for the display of new short-form videos that could very well turn into long-form series for Discovery’s cable networks if they prove to be popular or sticky enough.

I think the relationship will work better using HowStuffWorks content on the TV shows than trying to focus on video content from the TV show. Here’s an even better idea: take user submitted how stuff works like content and put it on TV — now that would be good for both. At the least Discovery needs to make it easy to embed in websites a la YouTube rather than forcing people to view only at HowStuffWorks. The ironic thing is Google and other search engines still don’t provide good search of the content inside videos.

Mathew Ingram points out that Discovery also purchased Treehugger for $10 million. The $250 million is Discovery’s biggest purchase to date.

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Sproose happily describes itself as:

the search engine of the people, by the people, for the people and NOT corporations. Only a quality site reviewed by real people can move up.

At a time when too many new sites and services — whether it makes sense or not — are promoting some kind of social network complete with voting, mini- and micro-blogging, commenting, tagging and/or some variation of features thereof, what Sproose promotes in their tagline above didn’t seem very original to me. It also seemed awkward and forced coming from a search engine. I’ll get back to other issues with this motto before this post is done.

As someone who once had faith in the human edited Dmoz project — but no worries, not any more — I was mildly intrigued how good Sproose human promoted results would compare against Google (disclaimer #2: I own GOOG stock). After seeing dozens of also ran search engines, my expectations for Sproose weren’t too high, which probably helps their grade for those who want to skip the blow-by-blow specifics to the last section summary.

Not registering doesn’t make much sense
Registering at Sproose allows you to vote up or down search results for other users — guest voting doesn’t impact the search results of others, which sort of misses the point of the site — so I jumped in. I left the checkbox default checked “share vote history” and Sproose kicked me back with an error message over my email.

Hmm readers are probably tiring of me pointing this out with so many registration forms but it’s a great recurring example of how many programmers are using flawed regular expressions. The + symbol is allowed in email addresses. Please fix that, Sproose crew.

After entering another email address that didn’t have the +, I was greeted with a page offering me three options: upload a picture, take a tour and start searching.

Rarely skipping an opportunity to seed the web with pictures of my ugly mug, I went with top green arrow #1. After a familiar web upload option, I was redirected to my profile page.

Although I personally don’t mind receiving adult search results, I decided to leave the default option of filtering these results and go back in the browser to the green arrow options. I dragged the “Sproose it Up!” bookmarklet to my bookmark bar, although shortening to ’sproose’. Hey, space up there is at a premium (wink, wink, nudge, nudge Sproose crew).

Next I chose the tour which graphically showed how to use Sproose. Graphic instructions are easy to follow and look a little comic-like with the bubble text. If you know how to use digg or any of the digg clones the same premise applies with Sproose: if you like it, vote for it. The more votes from Sproose users makes the site appear higher in the search results.

Don’t like something? Click on the trash can graphic. Unsurprisingly, you can leave comments on pages a la stumbleupon and countless other services. If somebody else comments at Sproose you’ll get an email alerting you of their comments. I hope there is a feature to disable these emails because I never saw one. In each mail they do have an unsubscribe message though. This is counter-productive for those to leave comments. I want to get follow-up comments on blogs posts and forum threads where I leave comments, not on Sproose search results.

One glaring problem with services like this is the flawed perception that everybody voting is following the rules: good = good, bad = trash. What about those who go in and trash can a bunch of good results just because they don’t like the webmaster? Or perhaps worse conversely by voting up content that isn’t high quality? This is a very real concern that very few voting systems I’ve seen in my 10+ years on the web have addressed properly.

One last word on the Sproose tour. Would have been nice to see text instructions for the sight-impaired. The images didn’t have descriptive ALT tags rendering the tour page not very accessibility or search engine friendly. If only webmasters had to view their sites with impaired vision …

Egosearch results
As with many other search engines, I start with searching on keywords that I think our sites should rank high. I started with the keyword ‘hmm’ which if you try that in Google this blog is currently ranked #3. In Sproose it was the top result on the second page. I voted for it and the following showed:

Immediately this got me thinking if Sproose disallowed or discouraged voting for your own sites? It appears to be the reverse with Sproose providing webmasters with several ways to add Sproose it up buttons to your site “Your site moves up in Sproose results - attracting more new users for you!”

In the case of this blog ‘readers’ would be a better, more friendly description, but they should probably just change “users” to “visitors” for variety.

Spreading the search result love around
Now does this mean you should race to register for Sproose voting up your sites for keywords for only or even primarily your own site(s)? No, you wouldn’t want to vote up your own posts at digg or thumbs up only your own stuff at Stumbleupon either.

I decided to use it for a series of recent searches I’d made on Google (using Google Web History feature) and vote up the best results in Sproose for the same queries. Earlier today I was wondering what year music CDs were first released. Among others I tried the following queries: year music cd released to market and history of music cd. Neither revealed a simple, quick answer of the year. I ended back up at Google which led me to this New York Times archive article from August 25, 1991: “Available only since 1983, CD’s have taken the music business by storm and now account for 43.6 percent, or 286 million units, of all the music sold annually.”

‘Sproosing’ that listing didn’t give me an option for a specific keyword combination, so guess I’m leaving it on faith for the next searcher to find that result? The ability to assign results to pages part when viewing a page would be a nice addition, or if it’s a feature making it more obvious. Instead, Sproose puts itself in a cliched top position frame that most likely will be blocked on some percentage of websites (although none blocked during my testing successfully). Also the popup window for comments in Firefox has the text getting cut off in the form, another bug needing fixed.

Tried a couple other search results and pumped up good sites like: ’stumbleupon’, ‘download web browser’ (Firefox, Opera, Safari), ‘blog software’ (Wordpress), ‘online auctions’ (eBay), ‘p2p voip’ (Skype), ‘classifieds’ (Craigslist), ‘dictionary’ (Dictionary.com), ‘podsafe music’ (Podshow), ‘dokken’ (official Don Dokken website), ‘van halen’ (official Van Halen website) and more.

I didn’t check in Internet Explorer but logged in and ran a few searches in Safari on the Mac successfully. Good to see the Mac crowd not left out.

Sproose offers a video search powered by Blinkx which I found a search for Hmmcast, a specific query, revealed only two results. Considering the next episode will be #176 (still working through the maze of HD in order to get back to a regular schedule again), that isn’t too impressive for a service pounding on the pipes for 2+ years (Blinx, not Sproose)

Summary and grade
I’ve been saying for awhile that the next evolution of search engine will incorporate some amount of human and machine and I remain interested in what people put together. Comparing Sproose against human assisted results from competitors like ChaCha.com, I’d rather use ChaCha at the present time. And there are no incentives to search like with Winzy or Blingo unless you are a webmaster and promoting your own pages.

Add to the above that the underlying machine search results I tested were merely … ok. Not something I could see using instead of Google. Also found very few common Sproose search results with votes which suggests that the number of people using Sprooce is still small. That’s to be expected for any new service, but to draw people away from the mighty G, they’re going to need some sort of hook beyond digg-style voting on sites. I know, I know, but they are new and we’re supposed to roll up our shirts and donate our time to the social network cause making their search results better something like what the Wikipedia is doing for encyclopedia.

Now back to that pesky Sproose motto. That Sproose is “for the people and NOT corporations.” My follow-up question is: for how long?

Hate to break it to these companies — unless you are a non-profit (did I miss that about Sproose?) — but some of us out here guard our time jealously. I’m not going to burn sand in the hour glass at your site making it better so at some later day you can sell the service to a bigger fish or IPO and make bank to go off and find some other new startup to begin the process anew. Sproose is going to have a tough job gaining traction if people distrust them seconds after they reach the site. They can help things by replacing that motto with something less like a political speech. Maybe something like: “working together we can build a better search.” Not that, but along those lines maybe.

I digress. For those with websites, you might want to dip a toe or two in the Sproose pool, but non-webmasters won’t find much to get excited about here yet. Grade: C

Update 8:12pm PST: Added a missing screenshot, the one showing how once I voted for the site in the egosurf area it moved up in the results. Also, Bob Parks, the CEO of Sproose stopped by to comment below. He said I missed some important features and I’m waiting for clarification back in the comments what exactly those features were/are.

Click To Play Hmmcast #175 (download links at bottom of post)

Scary Google search fact: searching for harpies, results in a sponsored link result for herpes.

Searching Live and the spiffy new Yahoo search do not offer a similarly creepy sponsored result. What are harpies? In Greek mythology, Encyclopedia Mythica™:

Harpies were described as beautiful, winged maidens. Later they became winged monsters with the face of an ugly old woman and equipped with crooked, sharp talons. They were represented carrying off persons to the underworld and inflicting punishment or tormenting them. Those persons were never seen again.

And then sirens of harpies on a cold October afternoon.

Hmmcast #175 downloads
PSP .mp4 (480×272) iPod .mp4 (640×480) Windows .wmv (1480×1080 HD)

What do you think the chances are of searching Google for the keywords ‘married 18 years‘ and the first result being somebody you know and have actually met in person? I searched both ways, with quotes and without, and the same first result belongs to Mitch Ratcliffe and his wife.

Turns out the result for me is surprisingly good. I met Mitch at the first Mind Camp and we’ve traded friendly fire on blogs. We even used to be guest hosts on the same local web radio show here in the greater Seattle area (Webtalk Radio, how about that Rob?). Fluke? Coincidence?

Of course Mitch’s post was on June 14, 2005 at 05:15 PM, which means he and his wife, assuming they are still happily married have now been married 20 years. Never have met Mitch’s wife, so maybe I only get half-credit in this anniversary experiment?

Why should you care about any of this? I just thought it was a fun thing to check out. My wife and I are celebrating our 18th anniversary today. I guess geeks are into checking Google for these kinds of things.

The picture atop this post was taken from our 17th anniversary dinner in Idaho at a floating restaurant. Plans tonight aren’t as extravagant. We’re playing it by ear, I think. Random celebration.

Kind of like random Googling.

Have you met the person behind the site of your Google married search result?
You can try this too. How about searching Google for ‘married ___ years’ (fill in the number of years you’ve been married) and seeing if the search result is somebody you’ve actually met in person. If not, maybe it’s time to strike up a conversation with that person? Maybe not. I mean with social networking the way it is, maybe this kind of thing won’t be so uncommon in the coming years.

Happy Anniversary, Baby! Bonus archives link: for those reading curious of marriage advice for how to stay happily married. Enjoy your day, be good to each other out there.

Google is green, but not just with money from their higher stock price (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock), they also dig solar power.

As mentioned last October 30% of Google’s power needs at its home office in Mountain View, CA are handled by the solar panels it installed on the rooftops. Check out their Google Solar Power web page (gotta love the solar panel over the logo) which shares comparable energy stats like how many loads of laundry or dishwasher cycles one could do with the power from the panels.

My Library
For those who want to keep track of the books owned by ISBN number, Google now offers My Library available through books.google.com in your account. My Library allows import and export (extra points there).

We don’t have many books any more. Most have been given away or donated. My favorite Mac program, by far, for inventorying CDs, games, movies and books is still Delicious Library (no relation to the Delicious bookmark program from Yahoo).

Google Reader adds search
Strange as it may sound a comprehensive search feature for Google Reader wasn’t made available until this week. I continue to be a Google Reader holdout, preferring reBlog and my own server. I like the idea that when I click through to a site the referrer is one of our sites and not Google, as well as being able to keep track in my own database the posts and pages I’m most interested in.

You can search keywords by folder, all items, shared items and starred items. It seems to work fairly well although when you have a lot of results it doesn’t return an accurate number, instead showing the rather worthless “thousands” result.

It’s opening day for Bourne Ultimatum and before checking the final day’s Bourne Ultimatum game, there’s a good deal going at Best Buy to snag the Bourne Files 3-disc collection.

This includes the Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremecy and a special third disc containing 45 minutes of bonus footage as well information about Bourne Ultimatum. Normally this package retails for $17.99, and is on sale for $14.99 plus you can get an additional $5 off by paying with your Mastercard. Since we’re still flying credit card less, we paid with our PayPal card which can be used like a credit card and still received the discount and get 1% bonus cash back. Sweet deal and way to catch up on the preceding Bourne flicks before checking out the Bourne Ultimatum.

Day 15
Follow the link in the agent indicator to ReadTeStOn.com and click on the numbers. The numbers will lead to a familiar agent IM window asking for a passphrase using the clue: “Which set of files was Pamela Landy looking for in Berlin when she found Bourne’s fingerprint?”

Hint: You’ll need to know some details about the Bourne Supremecy movie to find the file name. If you’re going to see the movie today, just pay attention to what files agent Pamela Landy is looking for in Berlin.

After solving today’s final mission there isn’t any message that we’ve reached the end, at least for those of us with less than the required 25-32 sightings (I finished with 11 sightings). You can still enter a drawing for the iPhone by postcard as long as it’s postmarked by tomorrow according to the Search For Bourne Official Contest Rules.

It’s going to seem kind of empty on Monday when there’s no more game missions to solve. Google and Hollywood need to get together to keep this streak alive. Movies coming in the future that could make for cool contest suggestions? How about Star Trek 11?

Only one day left in the Bourne Ultimatum game. If you’re just now getting into this there’s still time to start at the beginning and catch up with everybody else, but time is definitely running out. Here are links to all the days of the game which contain hints for each day’s missions. Day 15 if everything remains on schedule should be available at midnight EST (GMT-5) tonight.

Day 1 & 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14 (this post)

Oh, and I got another Bourne sighting yesterday, bringing my total sightings to seven for the contest.

Day 14
Today we must use IM to talk to Mustapha Nayet and then run down a phrase by Jason Bourne that is a lie.

Hint: Search for the phrase in all lowercase “bourne lie detection treadstone” on Google images and you’ll see a couple images from Dater Notes with the phrase Bourne said from yesterday’s YouTube video. That video is also in your agent console video section (see screenshot).

Good luck to all players!

Day 13
Today in the Bourne Ultimatum game we’re watching a slightly altered trailer and doing some instant messaging with the man himself, Jason Bourne.

Hint: Watch the trailer and be prepared to pause the frames for a message handle to put in the instant message section for Bourne and be prepared to copy his answer in the instant message window.

I’m up to six sightings of Bourne now. That’s probably not too good comparatively, how many sightings do you have?