Thursday, September 29, 2005

Pingoat update And New Insight On Blogs, Pings and Search Engines

Pingoat has invited me to use their free ping service again.
In an effort to promote blogs with original content, Pingoat's filter software excluded my blog from posting.
After a real person reevaluated my blog, the decision has been rescinded.

The perceived problem is a lot of blogs are created with software that automatically collect and publish pre written articles based on keyword selection. If you use other writers' articles on your blog, you may be black listed form using ping services.

The ping services use filters to determine if your blog is using automated article retrieval software.
Tighten the filter rules enough, and soon only blogs of people's pets or personal lives will be allowed to ping.
Are blogs for voyeuristic peeks into other peoples personal lives or a source of relevant information?

I refuse to use automatic blog creation software or promote its use.
Let's say you look up a term on your favorite search engine, the link provided takes you to an automatically generated blog with just the information you're looking for. You get the knowledge you were searching for and the writer's article is viewed. Has this automatically generated blog provided a service or is it a form of spam? On the other hand suppose the search engine sends you to a blog or web site that has nothing about your search term or just ads. In that case you should report the url to the search engine as spam. You didn't receive the information you were looking for.

The purpose of blogs became divided as soon as it became easy to place money paying ads on them. Many blogs are created for the purpose of displaying these money making ads. Even personal blogs have ads on them. Is it wrong for people to try and generate money with a blog? Too late to try and change it now.

Blogs are also used as a means to get in the back door of search engines. Many eBooks and articles have been written that promote blogs as an easy way to get your web site listed in the major search engines. Does it work?
Maybe at first but the search engine filter programers catch on fast, so don't count on it.

Speaking of search engines.
Gone are the days you could build a nice looking web site and get a good listing without playing the search engine game. Build web site with flash, frames or a dozen other things that are pleasing to the eye but search engines don't like and you will be listed on page 100.

At first it was all about the meta tags. People would steal the meta tags of high ranking web sites to get a better listing. Next the tags had to reflect the word density of the page. Each search engine had different rules, and web designers used software to fool each engine by presenting a new page automatically created just for them. About the same time, people were creating useless doorway pages with lots of key words for the search engines to see. Now it's all about links. You need links from other sites to get a good listing. The problem with that is you can just ask to trade links.
So the search engines required that you have quality links. Good links don't prove anything. You can buy good links from link brokers that found out they could sell them. No wonder half the time you search for something you get a link that does not help but has a good search engine ranking.

As long as people try to fool or scam the search engines, you and I will have to play the search engine game and find new ways to be listed. The rules change constantly.
Just like the rest of the world, Web sites, blogs, search engines and the next big thing to come along will change. All you can do is try to keep up and change with it.