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This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the conten

by rit 16y ago

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

jeremymcanally 16y ago
That would be great if Google would forget them. Occasionally I'll search for something and see a Mahalo page that seems to have at least a pointer to what I need, when in reality I'm just inundated with AdSense and the content that seemed to be there either isn't anymore or never was (i.e., it was a crappily autogenerated page that has an intro paragraph seemingly from someone's blog or something with no link or other content). The idea is great (curated knowledge could be a boon for consumers and producers), but I think the way they're doing it sucks.
- axod 16y ago
  Doesn't Google have a feature: [x] Never show me any more results from foo.com I hate that site. Remember my preference. If not, it should do.
  - nailer 16y ago
    Alas people who visit Mahalo for no other reason than Jason's linkfarm directed their search their may not hate the site, although the person running the site with real content does.
    - jcalacanis 16y ago
      Take a look at the how to play guitar chords page... it's everything you would want if you did that search. people stay on that page for 20-60 minutes!!! and there are 50 people on that page all the time learning to play guitar chords. sorry it's not how to set up a cassandra cluster, but it is of value to people learning to do something basic. best jcal
      - axod 16y ago
        Cool. If that's the case, if they get everything they need from that page, you can safely remove all of the adsense plastered all over the page right? Since people are sitting on that page learning to play chords, and the content is so awesome.
      - illumin8 16y ago
        Nice. Who did you steal the content from? Or do you just, out of the goodness of your heart, pay a professional guitar player to write content for you and give it away to the Internet for free?
        nailer 16y ago
        In Jason's defence (I still think he's a scumbag) he pays people to aggregate data from multiple sources. That's about as unethical as writing a paper that cites multiple sources (provided he's actually using a reasonable number of sites and is within fair use). This, of course, doesn't excuse the fake domains and link farming.
      - nailer 16y ago
        It sounds awesome Jason - so why do you need to register a whole bunch of different domains and point to the content, rather than just acquiring real links, like other sites with valuable content do?
- l0stman 16y ago
  Since this issue has been raised many times on HN, could you show the kind of queries that point back to Mahalo in the results. I use Google daily but it never happened to me.
  - daeken 16y ago
    Seconding this. After years of heavy googling, I just came upon my first Mahalo page a few days ago. It was in probably the 6th or 7th position on the first page, and gave me the answer I needed.
- illumin8 16y ago
  The pages I get in my Google results from Mahalo seem to be along the same lines as the Experts Exchange pages you get. Annoying pages with crap ads all over them that just clog up your results. Google should just blacklist the entire domain and be done with it. Do they really provide any value to the Internet at all?
  - Bluem00 16y ago
    If you scroll to the bottom of the very long Experts Exchange page, the question and answers are down there. While I realize your question was meant to be rhetorical, EE has answered my question a few times, and I want to say that they do provide some value, which I suppose is reflected in its page rank.
    - illumin8 16y ago
      Yeah, I realize if you scroll all the way to the bottom and ignore all of the up-selling of premium access, you can see the real answer, but their pages are designed specifically so that you don't notice this and don't bother to scroll so far. I just use Experts Exchange as an example because they seem to be another company that uses SEO gaming techniques to get a PageRank that isn't really justified based on their content. I'll admit, I have gotten an answer or two from EE, but at the same time I also wonder where they stole the real content from. These companies that do SEO rarely generate any real content themselves. They all violate copyright in flagrant ways.
jcalacanis 16y ago
Thank you.... and I agree. We are 100% SEO compliment to best practices and we delete/deindex/build out any community pages that are short every month. Google Knol, Wikipedia, About.com, eHow and Associated Content don't do this! We are uber agressive about removing short pages, and investing thousands of dollars in top pages. like these two: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords These claims by hater SEOs are basically B.S. They take the last 10,000 pages the community are working on and say "gotcha!!! these pages suck!" Well, they are being worked on! Come back in 60-90 days and they will be built out or they will be deindexed. that simple. ... absurd.
- covercash 16y ago
  Is this a fake account? I thought this was Jason's HN account: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonmcalacanis http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonmcalacanis
  - covercash 16y ago
    Looks like it is Jason... verified via Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason/status/16702228671 https://twitter.com/jason/status/16702228671
    - jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
      back on my old account... had linked that to Facebook, so had to activate my FB account to login reset password, deactivate again, etc. will post under this one going forward.
- axod 16y ago
  I see http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake has 4 adsense units on it. Adsense says you're allowed a maximum of 3. Something I'm missing? Or is there some special Google deal by which you can add more than 3 and get away with it? In terms of user experience, I think the ratio of content to adverts on that page (Which you seem to cite as a good page) is way out. Tons of adverts / cross promotion etc, and a little bit of content in the middle.
davidw 16y ago
I wouldn't submit one of these myself, but I think the reason they keep turning up is pretty evident: Superficially (in the sense that I've never really looked carefully), it looks like he's gaming Google and getting away with it, which is a pretty big deal if it's true.
jteo 16y ago
The effect of every HN reader ignoring Mahalo is so small it is likely to be mathematically discontinuous.

by rit 16y ago

jeremymcanally 16y ago

That would be great if Google would forget them. Occasionally I'll search for something and see a Mahalo page that seems to have at least a pointer to what I need, when in reality I'm just inundated with AdSense and the content that seemed to be there either isn't anymore or never was (i.e., it was a crappily autogenerated page that has an intro paragraph seemingly from someone's blog or something with no link or other content). The idea is great (curated knowledge could be a boon for consumers and producers), but I think the way they're doing it sucks.

axod 16y ago
Doesn't Google have a feature: [x] Never show me any more results from foo.com I hate that site. Remember my preference. If not, it should do.
- nailer 16y ago
  Alas people who visit Mahalo for no other reason than Jason's linkfarm directed their search their may not hate the site, although the person running the site with real content does.
  - jcalacanis 16y ago
    Take a look at the how to play guitar chords page... it's everything you would want if you did that search. people stay on that page for 20-60 minutes!!! and there are 50 people on that page all the time learning to play guitar chords. sorry it's not how to set up a cassandra cluster, but it is of value to people learning to do something basic. best jcal
    - axod 16y ago
      Cool. If that's the case, if they get everything they need from that page, you can safely remove all of the adsense plastered all over the page right? Since people are sitting on that page learning to play chords, and the content is so awesome.
    - illumin8 16y ago
      Nice. Who did you steal the content from? Or do you just, out of the goodness of your heart, pay a professional guitar player to write content for you and give it away to the Internet for free?
      - nailer 16y ago
        In Jason's defence (I still think he's a scumbag) he pays people to aggregate data from multiple sources. That's about as unethical as writing a paper that cites multiple sources (provided he's actually using a reasonable number of sites and is within fair use). This, of course, doesn't excuse the fake domains and link farming.
    - nailer 16y ago
      It sounds awesome Jason - so why do you need to register a whole bunch of different domains and point to the content, rather than just acquiring real links, like other sites with valuable content do?
l0stman 16y ago
Since this issue has been raised many times on HN, could you show the kind of queries that point back to Mahalo in the results. I use Google daily but it never happened to me.
- daeken 16y ago
  Seconding this. After years of heavy googling, I just came upon my first Mahalo page a few days ago. It was in probably the 6th or 7th position on the first page, and gave me the answer I needed.
illumin8 16y ago
The pages I get in my Google results from Mahalo seem to be along the same lines as the Experts Exchange pages you get. Annoying pages with crap ads all over them that just clog up your results. Google should just blacklist the entire domain and be done with it. Do they really provide any value to the Internet at all?
- Bluem00 16y ago
  If you scroll to the bottom of the very long Experts Exchange page, the question and answers are down there. While I realize your question was meant to be rhetorical, EE has answered my question a few times, and I want to say that they do provide some value, which I suppose is reflected in its page rank.
  - illumin8 16y ago
    Yeah, I realize if you scroll all the way to the bottom and ignore all of the up-selling of premium access, you can see the real answer, but their pages are designed specifically so that you don't notice this and don't bother to scroll so far. I just use Experts Exchange as an example because they seem to be another company that uses SEO gaming techniques to get a PageRank that isn't really justified based on their content. I'll admit, I have gotten an answer or two from EE, but at the same time I also wonder where they stole the real content from. These companies that do SEO rarely generate any real content themselves. They all violate copyright in flagrant ways.

jcalacanis 16y ago

Thank you.... and I agree. We are 100% SEO compliment to best practices and we delete/deindex/build out any community pages that are short every month. Google Knol, Wikipedia, About.com, eHow and Associated Content don't do this! We are uber agressive about removing short pages, and investing thousands of dollars in top pages. like these two: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords These claims by hater SEOs are basically B.S. They take the last 10,000 pages the community are working on and say "gotcha!!! these pages suck!" Well, they are being worked on! Come back in 60-90 days and they will be built out or they will be deindexed. that simple. ... absurd.

covercash 16y ago
Is this a fake account? I thought this was Jason's HN account: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonmcalacanis http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonmcalacanis
- covercash 16y ago
  Looks like it is Jason... verified via Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason/status/16702228671 https://twitter.com/jason/status/16702228671
  - jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
    back on my old account... had linked that to Facebook, so had to activate my FB account to login reset password, deactivate again, etc. will post under this one going forward.
axod 16y ago
I see http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake has 4 adsense units on it. Adsense says you're allowed a maximum of 3. Something I'm missing? Or is there some special Google deal by which you can add more than 3 and get away with it? In terms of user experience, I think the ratio of content to adverts on that page (Which you seem to cite as a good page) is way out. Tons of adverts / cross promotion etc, and a little bit of content in the middle.

davidw 16y ago

I wouldn't submit one of these myself, but I think the reason they keep turning up is pretty evident: Superficially (in the sense that I've never really looked carefully), it looks like he's gaming Google and getting away with it, which is a pretty big deal if it's true.

jteo 16y ago

The effect of every HN reader ignoring Mahalo is so small it is likely to be mathematically discontinuous.