Comment by jasonmcalacanis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonmcalacanis | Hacker News Reader

jasonmcalacanis

this is getting really old and we're not interested in doing anything black hat or even gray hat. as such we're doing the following:

1. we're removing (or building out) any page in our system created by our users with under 200 words of original content. This will take a couple of weeks but it's tarted.

2. we're not letting users create stub pages (short pages) until we can noindex them and put them in a different directory (i.e. /stubs/) so google can easily tell the difference between them.

these pages are < 1% of our revenue and low single digits of our traffic. we don't benefit from them materially, and I think we're being targeted by Aaron Wall and other SEOs for my "seo is bullshit" comment from 2005 or so.

I guess that is fine... I gotta live with the ramifications of what I say. however, for the record I don't believe that SEO is BS any more... when i said that it was when we were building joystiq and autoblog and we spent zero time on SEO.

All that being said, we're being targeted by a small group of folks who want to take us down. we're only going to get stronger from this because our hundreds of contributors are rallying around building out the short pages.

Topix, Kosmix, NYTimes and Zimbio are all making quality topic pages and are not getting attacked over it. not sure why there is some double standard.

regardless.... this is not a material thing for us. we're flushing all these pages and moving them to a different directory going forward so that search engines know where they are located (i.e. /stubs/ ).

thanks for the ass kicking.... having a horrible day today over this.

jcal

http://bit.ly/jasondown

Jason, did you even read my article? This isn't about the traffic those autogenerated pages get, it's about the fact that through the minuscule amounts of PageRank that they are each capable of grabbing, you are now able to rank your mediocre pages with absolutely zero influence from the rest of the web.

We're not talking about stub pages, it's all the fully automated bullshit that you are generating. They not only need to be deindexed, they need to be nofollowed or removed altogether.

How is it you are out there playing the wounded puppy when apparently you haven't even read the articles or followed the reference links? You can't just skim this one and then craft a rebuttal and think you've addressed the issue. There's a lot of data in those paragraphs you apparently just skimmed over (if that even).

You have over 500,000 pages listed in your xml sitemap, and Google appears to have over 330,000 of them indexed. Click on this link, please, and actually go look at 10-12 of the pages we are talking about here:

http://tinyurl.com/yzmxq7b

Tell me how long it takes you, just by clicking through, to find even 3 pages that have any human interaction in them whatsoever.

Maybe, just maybe, you really don't have a clue what is happening. I personally don't believe that's the case, but if so then whoever it is you have working for you that set this up knows how to spam like a pro.

we're removing (or building out) any page in our system created by our users with under 200 words of original content. This will take a couple of weeks but it's tarted.

or

i'm also getting a list of every page under 300 words and having the page managers build them out in 30 days or deleting them.

from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1143512

is it under 200 words or under 300? are the goal posts moving already?

300 is the goal right now.... we're making plans right now.

.... keep the attacks up, only makes us more motivated.

There is a big difference between stating an observation and an attack. You can (and have) dismissed the Google guidelines as irrelevant. But you shouldn't slag off others as spammers if you are going to do far worse.

You are the one who attacked people. We are simply tracking how well you performed in your efforts.

Hold yourself to your own standards or close your mouth. Period.

Aaron: let's be real for a moment. You're a bit of a troll and you're certainly obsessed with me to an unhealthy level. I'm flattered, but it is getting old.

You pointed out some minor stuff we could do better, we're doing better. Now go back to your basement and hit F9 on Chatroulette.

Jason, either you are not actually reading what aaron's saying or you have an emotional intelligence worse than my mother. Just saying.

Aarons stating facts. You are responding ad hominem. Perhaps you should hold off on the reply button.

Jason, you've always been a total douche. I'm glad the rest of the world is finally catching up.

Try site:kosmix.com or site:righthealth.com

Kosmix always had noindex in their "search results" - Now stop whining like a baby and get your ass back to work instead of justifying your mistakes.

Jason - the "seo is bs" line was heard at every seo conference you headlined when you launched mahalo.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com