7 ms·

Jason Calacanis' Take on Google's Algorithm Change

59 points by mikeknoop 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago
I love how this sits right next to "How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google's Search Results" on the homepage. You couldn't make it up.
junkbit 16y ago
If it wasn't for TWiT I'd have never of heard of Mahalo.
crux 16y ago
This is not Jason Calacanis's take on the Google Algorithm Change. This is just Jason Calacanis spamming for his website. He's saying, 'It's funny you mention content spammers—let me tell you some more about the NEW Mahalo!'
mikeyp 16y ago
Brilliant!
lionhearted 16y ago
My feelings about Jason Calacanis evolved similarly to the way they did about Gary Vaynerchuk, just slower. With Gary, you see him going HiEveryBodyThisIsGaryVay-NER-Chuk!-and-this and you're kind of turned off, but you warm up to him because he's a good guy doing a unique style, and he's got serious chops/substance beneath the style. Similar for me with Calacanis. It was Peldi from Balsamiq linking to an article of his talking about how to deal with journalists smartly that turned my opinion around, and since then I've come to respect the guy a whole lot. He's got a strong style that rubs people the wrong way at times, but he's a super savvy businessman and also seems like a genuinely helpful person.
- tptacek 16y ago
  The business he actually runs turns off many people more than his personal style.
  - geekinthecorner 16y ago
    The first time I heard somebody say "Jason Nation" I threw up in my mouth a little. Later on when all of the hangers-on who looked good on camera were vying to be part of his reality tv show or whatever it was, and they started tweeting about "Lisa Nation" and Jessica Nation" .. I did actually vomit (I had a stomach flu, but Calcanis was a second-order catalyst of that projectile, I tell you).
  - comster 16y ago
    I do respect him, but I just wish Mahalo was something that I could use. It seems to me that maybe after his first success, he doesn't quite have the same creativity to problem solving. Instead "serial" entrepreneurs sometimes seem to go "big" solving a problem that might not exist.
  - arctangent 16y ago
    Agreed. In everything I have read about him it seems perfectly clear that he's happy to game search engine ranking algorithms to place highly in their results. Moreover, driving volume to his site(s) in this way is his main concern. But unfortunately for the people coming to his sites there really isn't all that much content to see. Perhaps this has changed recently - if so, I'd love to see an example (just one!) of a page on Mahalo which gives better information than Wikipedia (for example)...
    - zachcb 16y ago
      How does he "game search engine ranking algorithms"?
    - michaelbuckbee 16y ago
      Here is a quite lengthy Mahalo GTA4 walkthrough that includes a bunch of videos as well: http://www.mahalo.com/grand-theft-auto-4-walkthrough/ http://www.mahalo.com/grand-theft-auto-4-walkthrough/ Here is the GTA4 Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
      - 16y ago
- endlessvoid94 16y ago
  Do you still have that link?
kul 16y ago
Kudos for this pivot, the video is worth watching. Data driven decision making at its finest.
iamgoat 16y ago
Is pivoting the new synergy?
benhedrington 16y ago
Saw Jason live at DLD talking about "the pivot" it seemed like a genuine change backed up by some very quality video snippets from the new site... much different than his internet persona I had read about in the past. He even apologized to the crowd for "talking too much" when he was younger. A new leaf for sure.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  My internet persona is largely curated by the SEO black hats trying to spin me, and the people I've fired. :-) I'm a normal dude, just trying to build brands people love.... engadget, autoblog, joystiq, silicon alley reporter, mahalo, launch, this week in startups, open angel forum, etc. I just like building brands. :-)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
staunch 16y ago
Previously Mahalo was thousands of long tail pages like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?". Now it's going to be thousands of long tail videos like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?" That doesn't seem very different to me. Maybe I'm missing something?
- lukev 16y ago
  Nothing wrong with it as long as it actually intelligibly describes how to make a pepperoni pizza at home. At least video is harder to scrape from another site or auto-generate, which is where the only real problems are.
- mgw 16y ago
  But it's "WITH HD videos"... Sigh.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  To be fair, it's not like that at all (from what I'm seeing). Take this page: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords. Those videos are all (from what I can tell) produced by Mahalo, and are fairly well organized. Sure, it's a lot of videos, but each is specific to the task at hand. That seems to be a fair example of what they are working toward.
danudey 16y ago
So what Jason is saying is that they're actually going to earn their Google rankings, and thus admitting that before now they hadn't? Now they can say with a straight face that their results are good, instead of lying about it? I mean, I had that impression about Mahalo already, but it's weird to see him admit it's true like that.
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  A little cynical are we? I like that. :-) We had pages in the past that were not spam, but I would say they were on the ehow "lighter" side (think < 300 words. We now are focused on getting experts into our studio and building content around their expertise. This is about 10-25x more expensive, but I don't see any other choice. Google is going to smack down anyone who makes them look bad by trying to rank lower-quality stuff. We rank only 5th for how to play guitar chords, but ask yourself would rather use this page: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords/ http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords/ or ones in front of it like: http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200e.htm http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200e.htm and http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/index.htm http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/i... out page is clearly the best.... over time google will move us up i'm sure. big loser in this is ehow for going wide and not deep.
  - boyter 16y ago
    Actually I totally agree. I know nothing about guitar, but for that example Mahalo is the page I would go to first. Its bright, looks maintained and more importantly has a lot of what appears to be good content. Could someone who actually knows anything about music comment on this one? I would be curious to know if the content here is actually better.
    - danudey 16y ago
      I've been in the process of picking up my guitar and learning a little, and it seems pretty legit. There's detailed explanations and some good videos, but it does seem to suffer a little from a 'wall of text' in a few places, and could stand to benefit from some good diagrams or visual aids in parts (the 'Frets' and 'Strings' part could benefit from diagrams for example, possibly one showing both). It's not the best resource I've seen for learning chords (Garageband's lessons take that title), but as far as websites trying to help you learn, it's better than most I've seen.

59 points by mikeknoop 16y ago

I love how this sits right next to "How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google's Search Results" on the homepage. You couldn't make it up.

junkbit 16y ago

If it wasn't for TWiT I'd have never of heard of Mahalo.

crux 16y ago

This is not Jason Calacanis's take on the Google Algorithm Change. This is just Jason Calacanis spamming for his website. He's saying, 'It's funny you mention content spammers—let me tell you some more about the NEW Mahalo!'

mikeyp 16y ago

Brilliant!

lionhearted 16y ago

My feelings about Jason Calacanis evolved similarly to the way they did about Gary Vaynerchuk, just slower. With Gary, you see him going HiEveryBodyThisIsGaryVay-NER-Chuk!-and-this and you're kind of turned off, but you warm up to him because he's a good guy doing a unique style, and he's got serious chops/substance beneath the style. Similar for me with Calacanis. It was Peldi from Balsamiq linking to an article of his talking about how to deal with journalists smartly that turned my opinion around, and since then I've come to respect the guy a whole lot. He's got a strong style that rubs people the wrong way at times, but he's a super savvy businessman and also seems like a genuinely helpful person.

tptacek 16y ago
The business he actually runs turns off many people more than his personal style.
- geekinthecorner 16y ago
  The first time I heard somebody say "Jason Nation" I threw up in my mouth a little. Later on when all of the hangers-on who looked good on camera were vying to be part of his reality tv show or whatever it was, and they started tweeting about "Lisa Nation" and Jessica Nation" .. I did actually vomit (I had a stomach flu, but Calcanis was a second-order catalyst of that projectile, I tell you).
- comster 16y ago
  I do respect him, but I just wish Mahalo was something that I could use. It seems to me that maybe after his first success, he doesn't quite have the same creativity to problem solving. Instead "serial" entrepreneurs sometimes seem to go "big" solving a problem that might not exist.
- arctangent 16y ago
  Agreed. In everything I have read about him it seems perfectly clear that he's happy to game search engine ranking algorithms to place highly in their results. Moreover, driving volume to his site(s) in this way is his main concern. But unfortunately for the people coming to his sites there really isn't all that much content to see. Perhaps this has changed recently - if so, I'd love to see an example (just one!) of a page on Mahalo which gives better information than Wikipedia (for example)...
  - zachcb 16y ago
    How does he "game search engine ranking algorithms"?
  - michaelbuckbee 16y ago
    Here is a quite lengthy Mahalo GTA4 walkthrough that includes a bunch of videos as well: http://www.mahalo.com/grand-theft-auto-4-walkthrough/ http://www.mahalo.com/grand-theft-auto-4-walkthrough/ Here is the GTA4 Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
    - 16y ago
endlessvoid94 16y ago
Do you still have that link?

kul 16y ago

Kudos for this pivot, the video is worth watching. Data driven decision making at its finest.

iamgoat 16y ago

Is pivoting the new synergy?

benhedrington 16y ago

Saw Jason live at DLD talking about "the pivot" it seemed like a genuine change backed up by some very quality video snippets from the new site... much different than his internet persona I had read about in the past. He even apologized to the crowd for "talking too much" when he was younger. A new leaf for sure.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
My internet persona is largely curated by the SEO black hats trying to spin me, and the people I've fired. :-) I'm a normal dude, just trying to build brands people love.... engadget, autoblog, joystiq, silicon alley reporter, mahalo, launch, this week in startups, open angel forum, etc. I just like building brands. :-)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

staunch 16y ago

Previously Mahalo was thousands of long tail pages like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?". Now it's going to be thousands of long tail videos like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?" That doesn't seem very different to me. Maybe I'm missing something?

lukev 16y ago
Nothing wrong with it as long as it actually intelligibly describes how to make a pepperoni pizza at home. At least video is harder to scrape from another site or auto-generate, which is where the only real problems are.
mgw 16y ago
But it's "WITH HD videos"... Sigh.
jasonlotito 16y ago
To be fair, it's not like that at all (from what I'm seeing). Take this page: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords. Those videos are all (from what I can tell) produced by Mahalo, and are fairly well organized. Sure, it's a lot of videos, but each is specific to the task at hand. That seems to be a fair example of what they are working toward.

danudey 16y ago

So what Jason is saying is that they're actually going to earn their Google rankings, and thus admitting that before now they hadn't? Now they can say with a straight face that their results are good, instead of lying about it? I mean, I had that impression about Mahalo already, but it's weird to see him admit it's true like that.

jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
A little cynical are we? I like that. :-) We had pages in the past that were not spam, but I would say they were on the ehow "lighter" side (think < 300 words. We now are focused on getting experts into our studio and building content around their expertise. This is about 10-25x more expensive, but I don't see any other choice. Google is going to smack down anyone who makes them look bad by trying to rank lower-quality stuff. We rank only 5th for how to play guitar chords, but ask yourself would rather use this page: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords/ http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords/ or ones in front of it like: http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200e.htm http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200e.htm and http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/index.htm http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/i... out page is clearly the best.... over time google will move us up i'm sure. big loser in this is ehow for going wide and not deep.
- boyter 16y ago
  Actually I totally agree. I know nothing about guitar, but for that example Mahalo is the page I would go to first. Its bright, looks maintained and more importantly has a lot of what appears to be good content. Could someone who actually knows anything about music comment on this one? I would be curious to know if the content here is actually better.
  - danudey 16y ago
    I've been in the process of picking up my guitar and learning a little, and it seems pretty legit. There's detailed explanations and some good videos, but it does seem to suffer a little from a 'wall of text' in a few places, and could stand to benefit from some good diagrams or visual aids in parts (the 'Frets' and 'Strings' part could benefit from diagrams for example, possibly one showing both). It's not the best resource I've seen for learning chords (Garageband's lessons take that title), but as far as websites trying to help you learn, it's better than most I've seen.