Mahalo Sells Corporate SEO Services? | Hacker News Reader

Mahalo Sells Corporate SEO Services?

seobook.com

73 pointsjfornear43 comments

There's smart, shrewd, duplicitous, deceptive, and finally downright dishonest. I don't know the man personally, but it's my opinion that Mr. Calacanis's business practices moved into that final category some time ago.

It's actually really sad. I wonder what's driven him to this level. Greed? Ego? 3rd party investor pressure? Simply not wanting to ever have his name associated with a repeat failure?

Especially amongst the entrepreneur crowd which he espouses to represent, truthful "honest" failure itself is looked upon less harshly than shady "gamed success".

Though in retrospect totally full of late 90s Internet hype, I remember being inspired by his Charlie Rose interview back in the "Silcon Alley" days of NYC:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9192442030075924272#...

What happened to THAT Jason?

He moved to LA.

LA is really nice..... like New York City with better weather and a beach. :-)

I can't speak to the morality of Mahalo and Jason's hand in it but I think since there are attacks on his person that I should bring to light some of the positives he's done for the startup community.

Techcrunch50

This Week In Startups (including encounter with Keiretsu Forum)

Unfortunately, as is the case with Mahalo, when one is both the CEO and "public face" of a corporation's brand, it is difficult partition the two relms outside of clearly personal matters (e.g. health, friends, family, etc.). A classic case being Martha Stewart.

In some instances, with morality and 'key executive personnel' insurance clauses in compensation agreements, they are, in fact, inextricably contractually coupled. As the saying goes, "it comes with the territory" and I'm sure is adequately reflected in his ownership of the company and current compensation.

Also, FWIW, I don't believe this was his original plan (e.g. Mahalo Daily's original format hosted by Veronica Belmont). Nevertheless, that's been the situation for years and Jason, and his board, have apparently seen no good reason to change it.

I believe that Jason's original plan was to have a true search engine with quality human written pages that people would want to use as their homepage instead of google. However this plan was not successful and Jason has realised the opportunity to drive huge amounts of traffic to Maholo from Google. This means that ranking in google for hundreds of thousands of keywords comes first and the quality of content on the pages comes second. It's obvious by the number of ads on the pages that they don't care about the user experience. They know that if people don't find what they were searching for they will click on an ad when leaving.

Not exactly.... take a look at the how to articles, walkthroughs, buzz news on the homepage and Q&A community. We're doing some amazing content and Aaron is focusing on short pages that are not ranked in any search engine and, that frankly, we don't let folks build any more (we started with an open system like wikipedia where anyone could build and build they did... now we have a system like MTurk where you have to complete the page before we publish it).

the page we get traffic for ten to have a LOT of content... also, if we see a page gets more than 25-50 page views we put a writer on it to build it out.

so, basically nothing that ranks is a short content page (stub in wikipedia terms).

however, the truth is google doesn't rank short pages except for VERY long tail ones.... and even that is rare.

google ranks you for long, deep content that is updated.

Aaron is making a big deal out a problem that doesn't exist because he is mad at me for saying seo is bullshit back in 2006. :-)

PEOPLE, QUIT DOWN-VOTING THIS MAN!

I'm that much of a hacker news user, but I come around here enough to know that this site prides itself on reasoned discussions. We're all supposed to be thinking adults, we can politely read what he has to say and decide for ourselves if he's full of it or not.

We don't need the mob doing the internet version of throwing rotten fruit at him.

Thanks for that. :-)

I also feel that Mahalo falls into that category and I don't understand what the problem is with us explaining the SEO value of our Q&A/knowledge platform.

It's excellent at white-hat SEO, just like Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia are.

I am surprised you fall in the trap of this guy who attacks Calacanis to change or shape a bad image of him. I don't know anyone of them, and it's obvious this is a personal attack.

Who is this guy who will tell someone else how to run their company?

With regards to personal attacks, see my reply below.

No management directives were given in the original article, nor my comment. For all we know, this "business model" is being forced upon Mahalo given the present economic climate.

Although I think it unlikely, Jason himself may not feel he has any other option and is being forced by the other investors in the company down this revenue path.

I urge you to read the original article and the previously posted comments on this thread for the full context of Mahlo's behavior and Mr. Calacanis' response. It's the double-speak and clearly disingenuous ignorance of his response which is the crux of the matter.

Your points only emphasize that this is a personal contrariness, that puts others/us in the middle for no reason, using Calacanis any kind of company tactics from the author's point of view, as an edge to make a public issue.

old-fashion publicity trick

I fail to see how there's a "middle" here at all.

We're both participants in a public online discussion regarding the behavior of the CEO of a company which, at least for me, I can say I have no legal vested interest or direct financial dealings.

Fundamentally, this is between Mr. Calacanis, the management of Mahalo, and Google.

We're both mere spectators. By replying personally, Mr. Calacanis chose to make this a personal public issue--in both the original article & this forum. That's entirely within his purview. I'm sure he's experienced enough to know the potential ramifications of those actions.

That's exactly the issue. The dispute if any should be between the interested parties.

How do you consider yourself not caught in the "middle" when you potentially change your view about someone based on one source?

Was that Jason's approach when he flamed Squidoo publicly over and over again in the media until he got their site penalized by Google? Guess not, eh.

And keep in mind Squidoo was not automating and scraping on the scale that Mahalo is today. So Mahalo is far worse.

> For all we know, this "business model" is being forced upon Mahalo given the present economic climate.

I find this a little tough to buy. I thought the concept of "human-powered search" smelled a little funky from the beginning. In fact, it smelled so funky that I was really surprised that well-respected VCs invested in it. I figured there had to be something in the prospectus that wasn't in the public marketing.

Ask Jason how many humans are on staff who do editorial.

I bet (with at least 99:1 odds) the number is closer to 0 than it is to 10 when you back out the ~ 100 contractors around the world.

So then what is really human powered about the Mahalo scraper site?

I also bet Jason is surprised at how much I know about his business model. :D

I always did find it funny that the CEO of a so-called "human-powered search engine" could get away with claiming to not understand SEO.

The fantasy version of Mahalo is that some people (your grandma) would use Mahalo as their interface to Google. Mahalo would intercept the top n% of queries with better results, and pass the rest on to Google.

The reality is that getting anyone to switch to Mahalo as their destination search engine is nigh impossible. So, they go back to their real plan: create a crappy Wikipedia-like site for tabloid content and rely on SEO to get page views and fill those with ads. Use the human powered search as a legitimate cover. But that's just my opinion.

I don't quite understand the issue, but I think the conflict being , is that because google loves content and backlinks , he had first built a service under the disguise of just being a legitimate human powered search, and can now leverage his network to give credibility to other links for the highest price ? Can anybody else provide more context ?

The other non-trivial relevant issue was that at launch time he panned Squidoo as spam

flamed Squidoo in the mainstream press so often that he got them penalized http://searchengineland.com/search-spam-fight-mahalo-1-squid... (all so he could promote Mahalo)

....

fast forward the clock a couple years and Jason is operating well outside of Google's guidelines, massively auto-generating scraped content web pages. The auto-generating scraped pages are far worse than anything Squidoo ever did.

Jason publicly claims an ignorance of SEO to act like he doesn't know any better, then inside his corporate sales material the key selling point is SEO.

How can he both be ignorant of SEO and use it as his key selling point?

We are well within Google's guidelines.

We are noindexing the pages that have short content and are older than 30 days. If they are less than 30 days old and get more than 50 views we build them out.

That's just a smart strategy, and there is nothing black hat of it.

Also, 90% of our traffic comes from Q&A, walkthroughs and howto articles that are REALLY DEEP in terms of content.

Google has publicly given warnings against search results within search results and scraper content websites.

And time and again you have had scraper pages wind up in the search results against the search engine guidelines with various excuses each time. On those types of pages Google states "Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content." so no...those are not at all within the guidelines (or even the spirit of the guidelines).

Syndicating content without asking permission and providing no way to opt out and putting nofollow on the links is also a quite dirty business practice.

Keep in mind that scraper sites are not something you learned from me. If someone like me puts up a site like that it is burned almost immediately. Whereas your site has been scraping content for years. (I have never ran any scraper sites, but when Teeceo did what you are doing Matt Cutts described it as "shoot on sight" publicly on his blog)

... but we don't put search results within search results!

We target put 300-500+ original words on each page we index--just like a newspaper or blog.

I know this is highly personally for you, but you don't have to make things up Aaron!

Also:

1. Google is VERY smart about how people can try to game the system and they WILL NOT RANK pages with low content value--you know this!

2. In the small number of cases when a page manager makes a small content page we build it out the SECOND IT GETS OVER 25-50 views.

We WANT TO HAVE high quality pages and we produce a ton of them every day. We DON'T want short pages because google will penalize you for them.

We used to remove this pages from the index with nofollow and that got removed by accident--not that it matters because GOOGLE IS SMART and doesn't rank them anyway.

We are going to have them all noindexed again just so you will move your hate and venom on to someone else..... also because it will help our page rank!

that's the irony of this.... if we don't have these short pages we will DO BETTER! That's why we noindexed them to being with.

So, for that, I thank you for the free SEO of advice.

Also, you will be happy to know that you attention has sent us some more quality writers who want to take part in our revenue sharing content system, as well as a client who wants to work with our Q&A/knowledge platform.

if you were a sales person i would have to pay you a fat commission... instead I'll buy you a dinner and a couple of beers at the next SMX so you can chill out.

seriously dude... chill, life is short! worry about the people in Haiti or the fact that the iPad doesn't have a USB port!

"1. Google is VERY smart about how people can try to game the system and they WILL NOT RANK pages with low content value--you know this!"

If that was actually true then perhaps you would have more full time in-house editorial staff (instead of canning them all). If that was actually true then perhaps I wouldn't see any of your scraped pages ranking in the search results. If that was actually true then you wouldn't be scraping 3rd party content into almost all your pages.

But its not true...and so we are back at the beginning again.

"but we don't put search results within search results!"

Here are some examples of pages with no original content and many times the content on the top of the page is from search results:

http://www.mahalo.com/moding http://www.mahalo.com/grammar http://www.mahalo.com/phonograms http://www.mahalo.com/porn2girls http://www.mahalo.com/idahosex http://www.mahalo.com/guddagudda http://www.mahalo.com/forumbi http://www.mahalo.com/guerradechistes http://www.mahalo.com/rajaleelai http://www.mahalo.com/chiba http://www.mahalo.com/matahariku

Pages that have original content, but much less than 300 original words: http://www.mahalo.com/svu http://www.mahalo.com/plumpynut

I'm sure I could generate a very large list of pages that fall into either of these categories.

I understand that Aaron might have some personal issues with you, but it doesn't appear that he is making this stuff up.

There's a lot of context. The guy who made this site publically called out SEO's as scumbags, then used the dirtiest SEO tricks in the book to make his site rank well. When called out on it, he claims that he doesn't know SEO. Apparently now he's selling his expertise in this area he claims not to know anything about.

I guess to summarize, the only thing he did wrong was to be misleading about his exact knowledge on the topic of SEO. The thing is, you can start a business, and hire expertise. Thats not such a bad thing.

No. That is not the only thing he did wrong.

The issue was that along with...

- calling the entire industry scum to pull in attention

- going out of his way to flam Squidoo as a spam site until he got them penalized

- creating something far spammier and far more automated than Squidoo

When you add it all together it is pretty bad.

You sound like you hold a grudge. Really. Your only contributions on HN are to attack one person. Are you really sure this is proper?

I don't just attack Jason. In my bottom comment on this thread I state that I think he is great at public relations...which he is.

Maybe not quite at the Matt Cutts level...but nonetheless way way way up there...like at least in the top 0.01%.

exactly!

Aaron Wall can keep attacking me for a throw away comment from five years ago (five years!) and ignore the fact that I'm a fan of his as much as he wants.... but I'm not going to get baited into agree with what I said five years ago.

I was wrong about white SEO, I was right about black-hat SEO.

Aaron is sort of obsessed with me as you can see: http://www.google.com/search?&q=calacanis+site:seobook.c...

I've given him credit for teaching me the Jedi ways of SEO and for that I'm thankful. Don't be upset because you taught me how to do it well and in a white hat manner Aaron!

Are throw away comments stated on keynote speeches multiple times?

Are throw away comments used as the core marketing and public relations strategies for a new company?

Just because you are hoping that people have short memories does not mean you can change reality.

Lets see what Jason called Youtube http://calacanis.com/2006/05/11/how-youtube-won-great-seo-st... "How YouTube Won: Great SEO + Stolen Content (or the biggest hit and run in the history of the Internet)"

And yet when Jason takes your content and wraps it in Mahalo that is somehow legitimate. hmm. double standard, eh?

That is not an area where I taught you anything...it was one you discovered on your own, while analyzing Youtube.

The other thing you mentioned about YouTube was "If YouTube makes $250M from a sale their founders and VCs should give $225M of it back to the content owners like NBC and Loren Michaels who they stole it from!"

And I do hope you hold yourself to your own standards. Though if history is any guide :(

Is it possible that JC underrepresents the value of his services - which purport they are "Helping people find information they can trust"?

https://mahalo-press.s3.amazonaws.com/MahaloPressKit.pdf :

Perhaps Mahalo will (at no extra charge) help steer people away from secret pre-release details about Apple mobile devices.

After enough reporters get fired for listening to Jason, I am sure the market will work out that inefficiency ;)

In this specific presentation Mahalo is advertising a platform for how-to guides and answer services that can be used on other sites - how is that wrong? Google is about producing good content that's relevant and useful. Mahalo does that along with the right linking structure in place. If I was paying someone to help create content+an engine around it I'd find SEO to be an important sales point worth touching on.

It is not that providing SEO services is wrong or bad. The point is publicly Jason claims ignorance toward SEO whereas privately SEO is the cornerstone of his sales pitch.

It shows is public claims of ignorance toward SEO are (at best) dishonest.

Correct!

We make great content and tools for companies and they happen to be excellent at SEO.

I love SEO and Aaron is just going insane because he thinks I am a better SEO than he is.

Now, I don't think I'm better at SEO than Aaron.. in fact, most of what I've learned is from reading his blog and GREY Wolf's!

So, I don't understand why he is so full of venom for me when I always give him credit as a great inspiration for me!

>>Aaron is just going insane because he thinks I am a better SEO than he is<<

When you back out the VC influx of cash I am not so sure. :D

I think you are great at public relations, but I didn't have to flame people or take funding to build huge traffic streams.

I started out with lots of debt, no revenues, and a credit card and grew from there. And I only have ~ 6.5 years online...imagine my public relations Qi I will develop by the time I am a ripe old man like yourself :D

I mean...you're like 40!!!

I wish you great success with your career.... and the sooner you stop sweating me you'll be on your way. Seriously, it's a waste of your time to worry about what I'm doing when you could be taking notes and building something even better.

If you think that Engadget, TechCrunch50, Open Angel Forum, This Week in Startups, Joystiq, Autoblog, Mahalo and my other projects are so flawed, well, make better ones!

Also, I would seriously consider building something of lasting value beyond just SEO. You're clearly very capable and you clearly have the OCD of a potentially great entrepreneur.... point it at a big problem.

best jason

Who cares if he is ignorant about SEO or not? I don't see the big deal. And even if he is ignorant, he could have employees who do the SEO stuff.

Nothing shady in that PDF. Looks like someone is holding a grudge.

Didn't claim the PDF was shady...claimed that lying about being ignorant about SEO while selling SEO services was shady.

Big difference.

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