The last time we checked in on spammer Alan Ralsky was in October 2005 where I said to let him have his day in court. Well, he did and it didn’t go so well for him – even after he cooperated fully with the prosecution:

Ralsky and Bradley were charged for conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud and violating the CAN-SPAM Act, which criminalizes large, commercial e-mail messages sent using an unauthorized computer or with the intent to hide the e-mail’s original source, according to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. They were also charged with committing wire fraud and engaging in money laundering

Ralsky’s sentence was 51 months + five years probation while his son-in-law Scott Bradley received 40 months and five years probation too.

In September 2004 I wrote my one and only binary blog post. It was a glorious event that rose my prominence in the blogosphere from just another blogger to heroic status. Ha, who am I kidding, it was a non-event that took 4 years and change to receive the first reply. In binary naturally.  And yep, you guessed it, total binary spam.

I didn’t need do decode the message to see it was spam and neither will you, but I’ll do the decoding anyway.

A lot of ones and zeroes to say: “I’d prefer not having to translate blogs, but thanks for sharing.” Thank you back Comcast spammer 24.60.43.226 from Massachusetts.

After the last post on automated related links in posts I mentioned liking the relevancy provided by the Zemanta service and promised to check into the service in greater detail. Bonus: Andraz the Zemanta CTO stopped by in the comment section and answered a few questions which piqued my curiosity further. I like seeing company executives and reps out responding to blog posts, being transparent about their service. Andraz promised more features were on the way as backed up by the active Zemanta GetSatisfaction page. I’m guessing he’ll dig the info in this post for his team which is loaded with wish list items to make Zemanta a killer application.

Important note: the spam category placement is not intended to imply that I think Zemanta in any way spams anybody, rather I’ve noticed their service is being used by some spam blogs and splogs. There are lots of legitimate tools that are being abused/used by spammers, this is not meant to be nor should it be construed as condemnation of the Zemanta service.

I downloaded the Zemanta Windows Live Writer plugin and have been experimenting with using on a few posts at our group blog, VTOReality.com (e.g Anarchy Online 30 day free offer expires December 31, 2008). There are Zemanta plugins available for self-hosted WordPress, wordpress.com, Blogger and more, but I won’t be covering those here.

What Zemanta does

Think of Zemanta as an almost real time blogging research assistant. On GetSatisfaction they self-describe as:

Contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.

Imagine having somebody — or something — that sits beside you while you write posts and presents you with ongoing number of choices for adding external content to your blog posts like: pictures from Flickr, Wikipedia entries, homepage links, links to related stories around the web, company info, map locations and more. 

Above you’ll see a picture of what it’s like working in Windows Live Writer with the Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer active in the middle. Along the right is a full-size screenshot of only the Zemanta pane. 

Wish list #1: Allow width resizing of Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer.

The Zemanta pane is either open or closed by clicking on the two right arrows (<< and >> respectively). When writing I tend to want as much space as possible, but found that I liked the idea of having this pane open a little bit. This brings me to my next wishlist item.

Wish list #2: let users customize what sources and types show in the Zemanta pane

For example, maybe I only want to see pictures from Flickr. And maybe only pictures licensed for commercial use. There is a Zemanta filter option but it’s not clear how to use that to only retrieve commercial licensed ok pictures. If that is possible, then please somebody tell me how? Most of the plugins I’ve seen for showing related pictures don’t include this very important option. This blog has advertisements, turns a profit, and thus is considered commercial use by many TOS so a tool that shows me non-commercial licensed images is useless here.

Also maybe I don’t ever want to see links by Wikipedia or links to posts made by resources I already use or feel are too common. Then there are certain times I want to see only related content from sources in my OPML list. 

Wish list #3: increase number of sources from 160 to 500+ and include feature to allow to only draw from these sources

Lightbulb flashes went off in my head when I learned you could add your own list of sources, but was quickly disappointed to learn only a maximum of 160 sources are currently allowed. This comes up short for the number of individual sources used at VTOR and the number of current sources which I pull for this blog is over 600 RSS feeds alone, not counting my network of Twitter and Friendfeed contacts. We haven’t even gotten into StumbleUpon, digg or the many other places one can find stuff that encourages them to write a blog post.

I’m not expecting Zemanta to cater to users like Scoble who pulls from tens of thousands sources, but there lies a middle road between that extreme and 160. That’s where I’m at anyway and hazard a guess that plenty of other blog writers fit this demographic. Please let me know otherwise in the comments if you have less than 160 sources including Twitter, Friendfeed. I doubt many do that are blogging regularly these days.

As I’m writing this it occurred to me one could create a plugin mashup using the Y! context checker and provide those results from their own sources checked say once every few minutes or so. This would give the ability to draw from a specific source list much greater than 160. A toggle could be used for pictures or external articles giving very similar functionality to Zemanta. I wonder if some enterprising developer has already done the lifting here?

Wish list #4: Fix Windows Live Writer (WLW) plugin stability issues and allow easy disabling/removing of WLW plugin

If this wishlist were in order of importance, this would be #1. During the writing of this post with the Zemanta plugin activated, WLW crashed multiple times. Before activating the Zemanta plugin, I rarely encountered WLW crashes like this so I’m led to believe Zemanta was the culprit. Indeed, I exited the Zemanta plugin and finished the rest of this post and it never crashed again. Here are the errors received:

Obviously the worst kind of blog helper imaginable would be one that came and shut you down in the middle of writing something.

Fortunately during each crash I could save before the application needed to be restarted and my work-in-progress was safe. This is where Zemanta as my blog assistant got fired. I tried to disable the plugin in WLW. When restarting after the plugin being disabled it still starts up in the middle pane. Huh? This needs to be fixed ASAP. When something is marked as disabled it should not fire upon application restart. I exited again and uninstalled from add/remove programs in Windows. I saw a complaint on GetSatisfaction that another user had to use RevoUninstaller (freeware) to purge the Zemanta installation files completely. This type of once we’re installed we don’t leave on uninstall behavior is totally unacceptable and borderline adware tactic. Fix this now.

Wish list #5: scrap the Terms of Service requirement to use the Zemanta reblog image service link and allow something more (better) customized

I don’t see myself using Zemanta on this blog for the other wishlist items mentioned but the Zemanta TOS requiring me to use their button in every post that I use anything showing in their interface is a big reason to say thanks but no thanks. I wonder how many are using Zemanta to find related content and get angles are skipping fulfilling the TOS requirement which clearly says this is not optional.

Here’s the Terms of Service quote, Zemanta users:

• Service Description. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content on your site or within your application, you agree to display the Zemanta Icon logo.
• Service Icon/Logo Display. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content, you agree not to make any changes to the shape and size of the Zemanta logo, or other Zemanta created content
• Service User Interface Display. When a reader clicks on the Zemanta icon logo you agree to hyperlink that logo directly to our home page at http://www.zemanta.com, or other appropriate page within our site.

NOTE: even though Zemanta screenshots are shown in this post and the review is about the service absolutely no links or content was used from the interface, so you won’t see that image link here as required by the TOS. In fact during the writing of this post I uninstalled the plugin as mentioned above.

Zemanta, just get rid of the TOS requirement altogether. Credit link in a blog post like this should be more than sufficient as a site-wide mention of the service. This post will be spidered by Google and will remain as long as this site — or your service — is live. There is no reason for me to promote Zemanta in every single post where Zemanta was somewhat helpful. That would be the equivalent of mentioning a human blog assistant’s name in every post even when it’s not relevant. It starts to feel kind of spammy to me, which leads to another concern I had about Zemanta. And one that I voiced to their CTO in the comments about my familiarity with their service to date.

I’ve noticed a considerable number of sites using posts from this blog as related links on very spammy/sploggy blogs and trackbacking in from those posts. This just sullies the Zemanta brand. It also could lead to search engines punishing these unrelated, forced Zemanta links someday. The lines between paying somebody to put up a link without rel=nofollow and bartering for the link (which is what Zemanta is doing) are fuzzy, IMO.  I’m not saying that Zemanta is spamming anybody or is a haven for spammers nor that they can control whether or not spammers are using their services, but it’s an issue worth mentioning.

Andraz pointed out in the comments that these brand name companies are using Zemanta: Real Networks official blog, HP Marketing Blogs, Chris Brogan, some start-up CEOs, Geekdad blog at Wired.com, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to deprive Zemanta any credit for being a blog helper — links here and there where relevant are fine, just not in every single post. Adding to that I strongly dislike where these links point to: the Zemanta reblogging web interface.

This thing is an eyesore from a design and usability standpoint.

Not sure if it’s the hard to read text (writers need their eyes!) or the fact that we’re being sandwiched into a dual pane and then being asked to give Zemanta our blog login credentials. It’s all around fail to me from a blog owner perspective. Why should I send other bloggers off to use that? Most bloggers already have their own blog interface they are happy using. At the very least give me the ability to customize what that link does and/or provide the interface directly on this blog at least. It would be awesome if Zemanta would allow Zemanta registered users to redirect that link to their blog interface of choice: e.g launch windows live writer with that text highlighted or Firefox plugin and so on.

Zemanta still the most useful that I’ve seen in this class of tools

Despite Zemanta’s shortcomings mentioned in this Hmm Review, it is the best I’ve seen/used to date at what it does. Much better and contextually related than Sphere. If Zemanta fills the wishlist items mentioned here, I’d strongly recommend this tool to blogging friends and probably use more myself. As it stands now, the Windows Live Writer plugin needs too much work to be added to my workflow. Might be worth reviewing the other plugin options to see if they are better. As always, I invite you to agree or disagree below. Grade: C+

I don’t want email from Comcast telling me about either their partners or their latest, greatest offers.

As their customer you would expect they’d respect my simple request not to solicit me. Check out the creative subject line of their email received this morning at 6:25am: "Notification about Email from Comcast." Stay with me, it gets even more silly.

Now the body of Comcast’s email below, red penciled by me:

#1 - Comcast acknowledges that as their customer I’ve asked them not to communicate with me regarding "offers and promotions." They are calling this email a "service-related email" (see #5) and yet asking me to "Sign Up Now" (#3). Is that a service or an offer or promotion? You decide.

#2 - Comcast respects my privacy and promises to only send essential emails. Is this email essential to my Comcast service, really? It seems more like them reminding me that I have told them that I don’t want them to send me offers and promotions and yet wanting me to sign up so I can receive offers and promotions. If this is a small sampling of their urgent news, I’ll pass, thank you.

#3 - Call to action. A link is not always promotional, but if I’m being urged to buy something or sign up one could argue that yes, that is promotional.

#4 - Comcast appreciates my understanding? Really? Implied consent, I guess. No, really I don’t understand the purpose of this essential service email. Yes, I told them not to send me promotional emails but they somehow feel compelled to remind me that I’m not receiving promotional emails and appreciate my understanding and — by the way — I can "Sign Up Now" not to miss out on future promotional emails.

#5 - Just another friendly reminder in smaller, gray text that this, indeed, is not an offer or promotion, it’s only a service-related email. Did you get that? We appreciate your understanding.

Come on, Comcast, this pedantic email begs to be deleted. Especially with the Sign Up Now link it flirts dangerously close to spam, close enough to put it in the spam category. On the other hand, it’s kind of funny. Thank you for the essential email smile this morning.

Going through the comment spam on another blog and had a good laugh. Because this doesn’t really fit any topic over on that blog, I’m sharing the God comment spam (pictured above, text below) here:

This website is very nice and colorful too. Its nice to have something to show others where you attend church and to show all the smiling people filled of the goodness of the Lord. You have a wonderful website here. May God rich bless you always.

Maybe Judy is not a comment spammer, and hopefully I won’t burn in hell for bringing the following things to light, but there are some problems with her description of the blog in question. Let’s take a look at the blog — it’s my TD Scripts Wordpress plugin and mod blog. Here’s a screenshot for reference:

Does the above design seem "colorful." The design is like 95% whitespace. Ok, maybe the blue hyperlinks (the internet default, yes?) are colorful. The text is mostly black, so no hit there.  She called the website "very nice" which I’m honored if she felt that way, but doubt that it’s sincere, especially when the comment comes with a link to a site trying to sell such wonderful things as Penis Growth Pills (sorry, no link here) and Penis Growth Oil. Judy, Judy, Judy.

So what should I read into a comment that leads readers to male enhancement stuff? Now I know "Judy" what will "show all the smiling people the goodness of the Lord." Something tells me God has seen penises of all shapes and sizes.

I took the liberty to check your IP location, "Judy" because, well, I’m sure God might appreciate a friendly remember where another lowlife comment spammer hails from:

Yes, I smiled thinking about how God feels about "Judy’s" penis enhancement comment spam. Assuming there are such places in the afterlife, comment spammers who combine religion and penis size deserve a one way ticket to hell.

Like every other blogger on the planet with comments enabled, Hmm gets its share of comment spam. A lot of this spam is pharmaceutical. Most of these sites offer very little in the way of value and are likely created by a very small number of people. Don’t see as much blatant spam coming through services like StumbleUpon and FriendFeed.

That’s how I came upon stillsleepy.com which is one of the best looking pharmacy promotion sites I’ve seen to date. It has videos, information, a clean design and is SEO personified. If I ever was to consider going down the dark path of being a spammer — and don’t worry I’m not — this is the type of site I’d want to promote.

It’s almost useful. Even though I don’t have a sleeping disorder, this site makes me go hmm.

Check out the track how sleepy you are widget to the left (the primary reason I made this post). Unfortunately the website mentions the drug Provigil dozens of times (don’t worry I’m only going to mention it in this paragraph) but check out the side effects of this drug:

may cause you to have a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization or be life-threatening. If you develop a rash, hives, sores, swelling, or trouble swallowing or breathing, stop taking PROVIGIL and call your doctor right away or get emergency treatment.

Think I’d rather have sleeping problems than a serious rash or allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization. Not to mention hives, sores or swelling? Being sleepy sucks, yes, but taking this drug sounds potentially worse than, well, just taking a nap.

Are you a power napper?
As I get older I’m finding power naps to be helpful. Just short naps here and there, usually after lunch get me raring to rock and roll for the rest of the day. I don’t know if this is something normal as one gets older, but I’m about 99.5% certain I’d never take any drugs if I was too sleepy. Yes, even if prescribed. I hate taking meds. I’d much rather go natural. Eat more fruit and vegetables, exercise more, swing from vines, whatever.

Those reading who despise spam might be interested to learn that the nation’s first felony conviction for spam was held up in Virginia today.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world’s top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Almost all 50 states have anti-spamming laws. In the 4-3 ruling, the court rejected Jaynes’ claim that the state law violates both the First Amendment and the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Jaynes’ lawyer claimed this was a blow to first amendment rights but it’s hard not agreeing with the courts. Should sending bulk unsolicited email be protected speech? It clogs our inboxes and wastes our time.  It’s one thing to be an aggressive marketer, but this guy seems to have gone way too far.

Do you agree that mass unsolicited spamming should be a felony?

If news that 11 spammers have been indicted over pump-and-dump stock schemes doesn’t make you even more skeptical of financial tips from strangers, maybe the following story will.

I received this message from TC through Zecco this morning:

Hi, new to investing and was wondering if you would give some tips which would be a good newsletter to subscribe to for my short and long term trading? Is this robot Bull**** or does it work. Thanks for your time.

The “robot” TC is describing is advertised as a Google contextual ad showing at Zecco (pictured atop) and a clickthru leads to the site along the right DayTradingCoach.com (sorry, no link).

I had never heard of this program but am immediately skeptical of any deal which is presented like this on a web page. It’s in the whole get rich quick format which you see on thousands of different one page pitches. Too many sites which use this format have gotten rich off selling information that can usually be found with some specific internet searches, not rich from the information itself.

Being a geeky guy, I was intrigued if I could find this “robot” for sale anywhere. Can you actually buy the “robot?” It doesn’t appear from my searches that you can, but hey, you can buy a newsletter.

Surprise, surprise, all that Michael and Carl want is your email address and name. There’s a “don’t worry we won’t sell your name and address” disclaimer at the bottom of the page. I decided on TC’s behalf to enter in a specially tagged email address and see what their email autoresponder sent my way.

The first email was a validation link from somebody named “Jens Clever.” This isn’t the Beav’s mom (June Cleaver), and was coming from the following address:

Trading Coach LLC
100 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005, USA

Before clicking the validation I would be giving this organization permission to send me information, I wanted to sniff around a bit more. I was on a mission to find this stock robot promised in the Google served ad, not be sent in a circle buying into newsletter offers. I perform some Google searches for “Trading Coach LLC” and see what others on the web were saying. I was led to the site spamstocktrader.com which tracks a fictitious portfolio of buying and selling spam stocks. Now check out the email disclaimer reposted by spamstocktrader (emphasis mine):

You are hereby advised that Daytradingcoach.com / Trading Coach LLC / Jens Clever is receiving a cash fee of two thousand and thirty two dollars from the company shown above (or its agent) as compensation for the distribution of this email.

$2,032 for distributing information about a stock trade in an email. TC, are you paying attention to this? You don’t need to be a farmer to smell this manure. No thanks, Jens Clever, I passed on giving you my email address so you could send me stock tips that you were being paid to put in emails.

The spider web of email finance newsletters
Now back to the original web page. Page two was another web page going on and on about a (second?) newsletter. Imagine that, another page with another sales spiel for, yes, a newsletter selling hot stock tips.

But where is this amazing “robot” that the ad teased? Apparently the “robot” is just used by the people who write these emails? Is it a “robot” that must only output information when money is scanned into it?

Sorry there is no bot for sale, only a newsletter with “468 spots left” so act quick! I wonder if the next prospect who comes along sees 468 spots left too or is this some random number for each prospect? Are you kidding? A newsletter with a limited number of subscribers? I’ve never heard of any email newsletter that was only allowed to a limited number of subscribers, have you? Digital limited, I guess, just don’t expect any of those subscribers to forward to their friends and family.

And then another request for a name and email, only this time no disclaimer that my name and email address wouldn’t be whored out:

Still only interested in the robot, not subscribing to some newsletter. I passed on filling out the second email. Ironically enough, Michael’s office is in downtown Seattle “across from City Hall” according to the web page at the following address:

Global Marketing Company LTD
93 S. Jackson Street #56595
Seattle, WASHINGTON 98104-2818, UNITED STATES

Oddly, the phone number offered isn’t a Seattle-based 206 area code number, it’s a number from the UK. . Here’s a link to a Google hybrid map of the area or embed below for those with readers that allow IFRAME:

View Larger Map

Michael offers availability of his physical address to the lifetime subscribers of his newsletter. Pay only $47 and you can stop by and see him during office hours any time. I should go down to 93 S. Jackson Street #56595 and see what’s actually there. Being it’s Sunday, it would have to be a work day. Maybe someday when I’m down that direction I’ll drop in and see if Michael is available.

Moral of the story for TC and others
I’m sure by now TC who I’ll be pointing to this post in a response will see what you need to do with advertisements and offers: verify the information and sources are credible. Perform Google searches and see what others are saying about the service. Due diligence.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t any stock newsletters or that the ones mentioned above might occasionally offer stocks you can actually make money by following their tips but you have to ask yourself if those tips were so great overall, so irresistibly financially attractive, why would they be selling the information? Wouldn’t they would be using those tips to make themselves a fortune and not be focusing on the very profitable business of getting paid to share these stocks in paid newsletters?

In our ongoing stock competition between my wife and I, both our portfolios are available for the world to see for zero, nadda, nothing, not even one penny. Open, transparent and including dollar amounts, # of shares when we bought and when we sold, and even notes about each trade. I’m far and away no stock expert and don’t write or sell newsletters offering stock tips, but I’m happy to offer three common sense guidelines for those new to stock investing: research, research, research.

Yes, that’s the same word repeated, but it’s the truth. TC, and friendly readers, if I was to trust somebody online that I didn’t know with making financial decisions, I’d look for a similar level of transparency about what stocks are being bought and sold. I’d examine the history and compare that to the information being shared in his/her/their newsletter. I’d perform Google searches and see what others who bought these newsletters are saying and how transparent they’re being about their own results from following the advice. Research, research, research.

Let’s close by going back to TC’s questions at the top of this post. I don’t subscribe to any paid stock newsletters so I’m not a good source to ask for what the best ones out there are for short term and/or long term trading. I do most my research through the search engines, analyzing companies including both past and recent news articles. In some cases my direct customer experience will compel me to buy or sell a stock.

As for if the “robot” mentioned in the ad is BS? Draw your own conclusions from the information available. Speaking purely for myself, if I could buy this bot somewhere and it wasn’t prohibitively expensive, I’d try it out and share the results — for free — not in any paid newsletter.

Maybe some readers have had positive experiences with paid newsletters? I understand Fool.com has a paid newsletter. At least that’s a name that’s been around awhile, TC, but no clue as to how good or bad the performance has been there. Just be careful out there. That’s the best advice any stranger or friend can give you involving any financial tip on the web.

We could be seeing a major battle in the making between Amazon and Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) down the road.

Look at what Amazon’s been having a huge amount of success with lately: their S3 storage and server processes. They are building out datacenters and bulking up servers, quietly getting more and more companies and developers to use them as their server infrastructure. Their recent S3 competition had the winners taking a giant gold hammer to a server. The message: you don’t need servers to scale, you need us.

Let’s not forget Amazon tried to take on Google with Alexa search and failed, then they tried OpenSearch and didn’t make a dent. The new battlefront is hosting.

Meanwhile Google is offering mostly ad-supported products and services with clean UI where they provide the hosting. At first glimpse one might wonder why Google wants to be in the content business. If you’re in the content business you have to deal with spammers.

Controlling how the world’s information is searched is largely impacted by having the data at your disposal. The more direct control Google has over the information, as they do by hosting, the easier they can combat spam and search what they feel is the best content. Google is extremely careful to clarify what I italicized there, by saying it is what each individual user deems the best content, but Google — and any search engine — already decides what is the best on some level in the way the results are returned.

Ranking.

This is becoming very tantalizing with news of their Google Knol project. In their own words, Google Knol:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

This sounds like a promising, worthwhile project and history shows that not everything Google does is a runaway hit. A lot of what they do, most of what they do frankly, isn’t as successful as their search and Adwords.

Writers could always write, long before Google and long after Google will be gone. Do writers want to make Google the new Random House? It’s one thing for Google to organize the world’s information, but they are fast becoming the hosting company of the world’s information with only Amazon as their major competition on this front.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to wonder if I want Google to be my hosting company. Giving any one entity too much control and power requires a huge amount of responsibility.

Can we continue to trust Google to do the right thing?

The growing Google content business
Google has already been in the content hosting business since buying Blogger from Pyra Labs. The number of Google content-related projects include, and this list is incomplete, the following services:

Blogger - create and store your own blog, hosted by Google
Google Base - store items that rank better in search
Google Code - download APIs and open source code
Google Page Creator - create and share your own hosted web pages
Jaiku - mobile microblogging service like Twitter
Picasa - store and share pictures
YouTube and Google Video - share and store videos created

It’s way too early to speculate on what impact Google Knol will have, it’s in invite-only stage at this point, but if it can make the list above as a viable alternative to the heavily spammed Squidoo and what Techdirt labels too early to call Mahalo, I’m sure both those services won’t be pleased.

As for being any competition to Wikipedia? Predictably, many are out there already talking and speculating too. Remember how Google offered at one time to host Wikipedia and was denied? Google would rather host Wikipedia than compete against it. But what do they do when they are denied? They find another path to take. Welcome to Google Knol.

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!