Sunday, January 20th, 2008 - 11:27AM
Ok, I totally missed this amidst CES, but apparently I made some random site’s Top 20 Internet Millionaires Under 30 list, which in turn made it on Digg. The only problem: not that I’d share my finances with some random site, but I’m definitely nowhere near a millionaire. Billionaire, yes. How dare they insult my mountains of money?
So what actually happened is this garbage make your internet riches while you’re young site (that I won’t link to / support) did a list of the top 20 sites run by under-30s, and one of the metrics they used to judge rank was “annual turnover”. Apparently Engadget “turns over” $20m per year (which is news to me, I think I only had $5-10 in fruit turnovers in 2007), which was interpreted by another even crappier site as the net worth of those listed — which landed me on spammy list after list of millionaires.
I’d just like to take this chance to clear the air and let everyone know I’m keeping it real with the rest of the non-millionaires (for now). Sorry ladies.
Sunday, October 28th, 2007 - 12:21PM
Last week’s Google ranking smackdown hit a lot of high profile sites (Engadget included). Was it just been an unfortunate fluke, or did it spring a bunch of these publications (Engadget included) into action, encouraging them to take a closer look at how Google perceives their sites? I’m not entirely sure which, but it looks like the lot of the sites hit by the drop are starting to see their ranks restored in part or in full.
Frankly, I found the whole thing pretty surprising. Not only because Engadget and Weblogs, Inc. haven’t made any changes in last few months (or years!) that Google would find substantive enough prompt that kind of severe reaction, but also because there was zero warning before the hit. Engadget has always been a good Google partner (it was the first ever publication to get RSS AdSense, for example), and I guess maybe I expected a warning message in Webmaster tools or some kind of guidance, being that we had no clear way of attributing anything to our sudden drop in rank. I know a lot of people blamed the rank drop to network linking, but Jason, who isn’t even with us anymore, said it best: all the links and cross-pollination on Engadget / Weblogs, Inc. sites are intended to highlight other great content and create a positive reader experience. It’s not now, nor has it ever been, about linkfarming or SEO. (Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make the many cross-network links necessary, and we’re always looking at ways we can make for a better reading experience and be better search engine citizens.)
Well, whatever changes Google made, they’re apparently in the process of unmaking — or is at least getting some of the innocent bystanders on the road to recovery. Engadget, Joystiq, Fortune, Washington Post, and many of the other sites named in the algo “Jihad” are in the process of having their Google rank restored to pre-smackdown positions (others, however, are not) The lesson was learned, though: don’t take your search rank for granted — not even the pub that broke Watergate is immune from Google’s scrutiny. And even though we haven’t made any substantive changes to our sites before or after G’s algo shift, there’s no doubt that now is as good a time as any to take a long, hard look at cutting some of the link-fat on our sites.
Background:
Andy Beard - Digg Favorites Slapped By Google (and followup / reactions here)
TechCrunch - Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms
Scoble - Google Page Rank is dead and has been for quite some time (Yo Robert, you didn’t hear me getting huffy, now did you? I knew this would work itself out fine.)
