Yes!! (DNO)

> I'd say stick with your beliefs on bizops that you feel are
> money-shuffling or just plain crap.

> That said I do find some of the claims on what is and isn't ethical for
> search engines ever so slightly frightening. Not because I'm doing it (I'm
> not), but because I'm left wondering who appointed some people as the
> global Internet-police of how other people design their own web sites.

> Search engines are designed to sort the good out from the bad, and as
> technology improves they are (and will continue) getting better and better
> at it.

> For example, since it was mentioned, keyword stuffing was already
> something the search engines were dealing with in sorting their results
> five or more years ago. I'm amazed that people are worrying about it (let
> alone volunteering as Internet-police for it) all these years later.

> Another thing that people are forgetting is those crappy sites in the
> search results often didn't achieve their high rank themselves. Rather
> they inherited it when a domain expired, and somebody grabbed it. My gut
> feeling is that many of the current crap sites that you see in the search
> results will eventually sink, as they get recognized by search engines as
> now containing crap, and as their link popularity declines. (Which isn't
> to say new crap sites may not replace them, by inheriting link popularity
> from other domains that expire).

> Moving back to my core point: Chapter 9 of Search Engine Positioning by
> Fredrick Marckini lists 12 red flags for spamdexing. None of them are
> "having a crappy web site". (Keyword stuffing is, but as the
> book is copyright 2001, it is identified as a losing strategy 4 years
> ago).

> Chapter 38 of the same book talks about the search engine's real cardinal
> sin which is presenting one page to the search engine and another to users
> (cloaking or IP redirection). You get comments about why they don't like
> it and what action they'll take (the word "ban" is common) from
> Lycos, Excite, Hotbot, and references to similar comments from Altavista
> and Inktomi.

> So what's my point? In my opinion.

> 1. It's your site, design it how YOU want.

> 2. As a practical matter, spamdexing and cloaking are not in my opinion
> the right strategy. Not because some self-appointed Internet-police tell
> you not to, but

> (a) because it produces a site that many users may hate,

> (b) because I don't think it will work - search engines already know how
> to ignore a lot of crap, and are getting better and better and it.

> (c) Crap sites rarely get any incoming links - see below.

> 3. What really matters is building a site that people will link to (both
> for position in the search results, and for direct traffic thru the
> links). If you have a strategy for getting lots of sites to link to you,
> that helps a lot. If you don't, at least build a site that people will
> want to link to, and that specialist directories will list. (Which again
> is a reason not to build a crap site).

> 4. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: If you see a crap site in the total few results
> at a search engine, you shouldn't view that as a problem - but as an
> opportunity.

> If you build a good site, on a similar topic, you should eventually be
> able to outrank them.

> - Your new quality site will be recognized by search engines as such (and
> if not now, sooner or later as they improve their recognition of site
> quality), and their crappy site will be recognized for what it is.

> - Your new site's link popularity should be going up (as more people link
> to your good site), and theirs will generally be going down (as people
> remove links to the crap site)