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Mahalo's new spam is worse than old
- jacquesm 17y agoCan we please stop giving Mahalo and Jason Calacanis more airtime than they deserve ? Every post like this just fuels the fire and creates more drama around the theme and in the end will benefit the spammer. There is no such thing as 'bad publicity'.
- dschobel 17y agoCompanies like Google care about and have responded to populist uprisings like this in the past (especially as it relates to search quality). I imagine that's the actual goal here.
- earle 17y agoWhy would they? This generates revenue for Google. There's no excuse for them not having banning them from day one, like they do every other individual trying to capitalize on the same tactics -- only the sheer capitalization and size that Jason brought to the table allowed him to get away with this at scale. Shame on Google for having double standards, IMHO.
- houseabsolute 17y agoGoogle has made revenue negative banning decisions in the past. They have demonstrated that they recognize that the long-term quality of their index is more important than short term profits.
- earle 17y agoEvery banning is against revenue, yet Mahalo still is operational......... Google's lack of definitive action against Mahalo's outright spam is the clear example here.
- cynicalkane 17y agoGoogle ultimately generates revenue from people using their engine and ad server to find things. If the quality thereof goes down, you will see people flow out of Google. If you say, no, that won't happen, remember people have to flow into Google in the first place... it's not the default search engine for the majority of installs...
- minsight 17y agoIf mahalo were pulled from the rankings, other pages, most likely of better quality, would fill that space. There is nothing to prevent them from using adsense to monetize the quality of their (non-scraped) content.
- jacquesm 17y agoIf google cared they could switch him off in 2 seconds flat. And if they're not aware by now they're asleep at the switch.
- dschobel 17y agoYou're conflating Google's caring about the alleged practice and the public's perception of the practice. If people are qualitatively unhappy with search results, Google will care. These posts serve to highlight that displeasure.
- mlinsey 17y agoI think it's a mistake to think of large corporations as singular entities in these sorts of cases. Given what I know about big-company politics, I am positive that there are people inside Google who support banning Mahalo and others who do not. Political battles like these are not resolved quickly, and an ongoing visible public backlash is the best weapon those who support banning him have.
- jacquesm 17y agoIf mahalo is 'borderline' or even 'ok' to a large faction inside Google they have real problems.
- tptacek 17y agoNo. This isn't someone commenting on an inflammatory comment that Calacanis made in order to attract attention. It's someone outing Calacanis for shady business practices, and putting more pressure on Google to end those practices. It's part of the search engine scammer playbook to stay just close enough to the line for people like us to get exhausted hearing about it.
- jacquesm 17y agoCalacanis shady business practices have been outed for months, plenty of google employees read HN, there really is no reason for him to still be around in the google index.
- tomh- 17y agoYup, this is the worst part, he is getting away with this even though tens of Google employees, and i'm sure including Matt Cutts, have read these articles. They do nothing about it..
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- anderzole 17y agoWhat a load of sh*t those pages from Mahalo are. The guide for free wifi in Chicago for example is way off and completely misleading.
- jason_calacanis 17y agobitch bitch bitch..that's all you guys do...haven't you realized by now that Google doesn't care about your complaints? Put a sock in it...Mahalo creates excellent content and Google recognizes it. Instead of bitching about "spam" why don't you do something about it. Create your own "spam"...obviously Google thinks it's completely acceptable. So instead of complaining get on the gravy train. It's like arbitrage a few years ago, those who bitched and moaned got nowhere, while others made millions.
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- stanleydrew 17y agoOK I'll bite. I didn't vote you down, but I'd guess that you got voted down because you didn't add anything to the conversation. And it sounded a little sarcastic maybe to say "Thank you for your important research." Write something interesting and people will vote you up. Oh, and you can't vote down until your account reaches a certain points threshold. I think it's 200 right now.
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- stanleydrew 17y agoMy personal opinion is that the "stop posting Mahalo stories" comments aren't any better than yours, but apparently other people here feel differently. That's just the way it is. If you feel that it's an important conversation though, then there are several things you can (and should) do rather than just post "Thanks." (1) Vote up the top-level HN post so that more people will read it. (2) Respond to comments complaining about seeing this conversation repeatedly on HN with your analysis of why you feel it's important. Then you're adding something useful.
- NathanKP 17y agoHow to succeed on Hacker News: 1) Post a quality, well thought out comment on the subject at hand. "Thank you for you important research!" sounds like something a spam bot would post. Also be sure to watch your spelling. That should have been "your" not "you". 2) Never complain about receiving downvotes. That just results in more downvotes for you. Instead look at your comment, think about why people may have downvoted it, and then adjust your commenting pattern to better fit what the rest of us want to see on the site.
- fnid2 17y agoMy HOSTS file: # localhost: Needs to stay like this to work 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 www.mahalo.com
- banana 17y agoWarning: This will redirect every second google search result to your localhost!
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- ashleyw 17y agoWasn't Mahalo's founding goal to improve search by creating quality pages written by humans, without the spam and low quality content you get with traditional search engines?
- MikeCapone 17y agoThat's what I remember too. Guess they figured out it was hard, and they couldn't compete with Wikipedia.
- patio11 17y agoThe charitable explanation: in the course of growing the business, Mahalo discovered that the tools they had created to support the "quality pages written by humans" were sufficiently powerful that laying off most of the humans and transitioning the rest to a "We pay you with Mahalo Dollars, which are sort of like a real dollar except for the bit about being able to be spent on goods and services" model did not affect the business in the slightest. Accordingly, Mahalo pivoted away from the original vision in the direction that the actual results demonstrated was working. The uncharitable explanation: "quality pages written by humans" is a bit of PR for Valley consumption (and, ahem, Googleplex consumption) designed to make Mahalo "too high profile to bounce out of the index like a black hat spam site."
- whughes 17y agoIt's come to the point where I actively avoid SEO-optimized sites on Google. If I see my search terms in the URL ("how-to-become-a-travel-agent") of a result, I'll just skip over it. Even moreso when there is generic, cut-and-paste content in the description. SEO may help you rank, but you won't get any clicks from me until I've run out of options.
- ROFISH 17y agoAlas, the Law of Facebook Login states that people will click anything on Google because they blindly trust Google.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- jasonmcalacanis 17y agoAlso, just relax and have a beer at the This Week in Startups party at SXSW.... life is too short to be so angry/upset about nothing! RSVP here www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=342222228076&ref=mf I'm not the worst guy in the world... you'll actually have a good time.
- three14 17y agoIf you're willing to make a few hundred thousand people have more trouble finding what they're looking for by landing them on your stub pages, just for your personal gain, does that make you the best guy in the world?
- shareme 17y agoJason, it be better served if you address the original points rather than side step them..
- jasonmcalacanis 17y agoWhat's the point of responding if the trolls just vote you down? see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1176362 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1176362 This is becoming sad. Really... some folks need to get a life.
- mvandemar 17y agoThat is actually quite typical of you, Jason. You respond to well documented and well written articles that cast you and your actions in a negative light by avoiding any discussion whatsoever that actually addresses those facts, by making more stuff up with zero substantiation, and by insulting and lying about the authors of said posts... but anyone who disagrees with you is a troll. You are a fucking piece of work Jason. Seriously. @Devilboy - technically speaking it was the noindex tags that disappeared (and which he refuses to address). There was never a nofollow meta tag on the pages.
- Devilboy 17y ago
- teeja 17y agoThere's no need to rely on search engines to find pages full of useful information. I do broad topical research, and I've managed to find pretty decent concentrated sources on most topics online. There are many fine specialist websites, and blogs, done by knowledgeable human beings. It takes time to find them and organize them (I use a custom database rather than bookmarks). SE's are fine for quick, one-off searches that -aren't important- ... otherwise, human expertise is far preferable, and always will be.
- corruption 17y agoSomeone should setup a public site to petition google to get sites like this banned from the index.