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Jason, any comment?
by aristus 17y ago
Jason, any comment?
- johng 17y agoIn for the comment as well. I doubt you'll get a true response because it's quite clear Mahalo is just auto-generated SPAM 99% of the time.
- vaksel 17y agomy guess it's "oh shit!", followed by a prayer that Google doesn't do anything. I don't think he has anything to worry about for that last part, Google is notorious for letting big sites off the hook(remember Target?) + here Google is also making their share of money off adsense
- vladmato 17y agoAnd Scribd.com, exact same model, scrape content regardless of copyrights, straps adsense on it, makes money.
- slig 17y agoYou forgot related search queries, which is basically bogus search queries that produces even more visits and bogus search queries.
- patio11 17y agoScribd ceased doing related search queries some time ago. Their CEO described it, to Techcrunch, as "reducing the aggressiveness of our SEO, which reduces total traffic in the near term but increases the relevancy of Scribd links in search engine results." Scuttlebutt among SEOs whose opinion I respect suggests that it is highly probable they got a backchannel from Google telling them that either they could drastically reduce the footprint of their pages in the SERPs or that Google's search quality team would assist them in doing so. Anyhow, their traffic went down by about 50% in a month, if you trust Compete et al. Search for [Scribd "aggressive SEO"] if you want the whole tale.
- axod 17y agoDirectly measured @ quantcast: http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com The big falloff end of June I assume.
- bonsaitree 17y agoAgreed. I think Merlin Mann has the best take yet on Scribd: http://tinyurl.com/yzl3mod http://tinyurl.com/yzl3mod
- blasdel 17y agoAnd pg capriciously blacklisted his domain from news.yc in response
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ericb 17y agoYou are free to question PG's motives and cry censorship, but to me, that blog post was malicious, tasteless, angry drivel that I really wouldn't want to see on here, whether it was about a YC company or not.
- tptacek 17y agoThat's why we have the "flag" button. It doesn't blacklist sites that are mean to YC companies.
- bonsaitree 17y agoEven a casual search of ScribD content will reveal the motives for Mr. Mann's post. He has every right to be angry. The malice has been well-earned by ScribD's repeated actions with other creator's content for nearly its entire history. While it's true there's no accounting for taste, I suggest you consult the dictionary on the definition of 'drivel'. At the end of the day, PG can do, essentially, whatever he likes with the content, routing (or lack there of), and posting permissions on Hacker News. It's HIS site. It's a shame that ScribD doesn't seem to play by an equivalent set of ownership principles. Namely, hosting and making money off other creator's content without so much as asking their permission; let alone proffering any ad-revenue sharing.
- 17y ago
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ohashi 17y agoAnd Experts Exchange...
- pyre 17y agoAt least on Experts Exchange, you can read the question/answers without signing up. It's just well-hidden (and doesn't show up in text-only browsers like w3m or links last I checked). You have to scroll all the way down the page past the looks-like-the-content-but-is-blurred-out-or-otherwise-obfuscated section, and past all of the navigation links. The content is actually there. I don't necessarily condone their page design and misdirection, but I have found answers on them through Google searches in the past.
- Luc 17y agoIt used to be Javascript-obfuscated. For all the times I clicked on one of their links only to have my blood pressure raised: I hope Experts Exchange withers away into obscurity.
- pyre 17y agoWhen it was blurred out with JavaScript, I always was able to find the actual content further down the page. I think that the 'blurred out' version of it was just to make people give up. Either that or their JavaScript was broken for Firefox.
- ohashi 17y agoIt wasn't always that way. They used to only show google it, but if a regular user came along they couldn't see it. Google got a bit mad and what you see is their current hack to appease google, and screw users.
- pyre 17y agoThis 'hack' was in place years ago. IIRC, I used to back in 2003 or maybe before then. Maybe at some point they removed it, then Google made them put it back?
- anApple 17y agoThey have 5 adsense blocks on their site, blended into the content. Good luck trying this as well if you are a "small" adsense customer!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- richcollins 17y agoMaybe he can also comment on masking ads as user generated content: http://twitpic.com/z6m8b http://twitpic.com/z6m8b
- ivankirigin 17y ago"we don't do any blackhat... Kind of silly." http://twitter.com/Jason/status/8177377715 http://twitter.com/Jason/status/8177377715 Note that if he did do black hat shit, and wanted this to blow over, this is the perfect dismissive response: starve the story.