4 ms·

I dreamed of building a website like the type I grew up on in the late 90s and early 2000s. The gamefaqs, mrfixitonlines and casterrealms-type websites for me w

by p3rls 3y ago

I dreamed of building a website like the type I grew up on in the late 90s and early 2000s. The gamefaqs, mrfixitonlines and casterrealms-type websites for me were at the forefront of making this internet medium to be better than books, voice or anything else for that matter for the transmission of information. Fast forward 20 years later. I think I've spent close to 300k on the website and team to help with it. I don't even want to think about my own labor costs. These days the google results for my niche are entirely dominated by an ugly purple wordpress blog ran by non-native English speakers that gets hacked every few months with a redirect to porn or russian sites. Their information is frequently wrong. It doesn't hurt their rankings at all. Yoast through it bro. Keep up the great work Google. The entire story was posted on twitter last year by some shocked SEO researcher last year https://twitter.com/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929 https://twitter.com/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929

aktenlage 3y ago
Is there a way to read it without an ex-twitter account? I just see the first tweet
- Scandiravian 3y ago
  Here you go https://nitter.net/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929 https://nitter.net/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929
rwmj 3y ago
I don't get it. kprofiles sounds like it provides a service. It might not be a great one or one I'm interested in, but collating all that information about K-Pop bands and publishing one or two articles a day is non-trivial.
- p3rls 3y ago
  I would argue that the word trivial is exactly what would describe their entire operation.
- yterdy 3y ago
  >ran by non-native English speakers that gets hacked every few months with a redirect to porn or russian sites. I imagine that this would be a problem.
  - p3rls 3y ago
    https://twitter.com/KProfiles_com/with_replies https://twitter.com/KProfiles_com/with_replies What's amusing is they think it's "rival websites" hacking them with redirects to russian purse sites
lovemenot 3y ago
I see your point and mostly sympathise. It's relevant to the topic and provides a personal perspective. >> ran by non-native English speakers I feel this clause doesn't help promote your grievance. A big promise of the Web was that it was World-Wide. If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality, all the better. I get that your specific competitors didn't excel - except in ranking. But, in principle, good wishes to global competition.
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  > If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality For many users, a foundational element of the quality of a website is that is in English; it’s all they speak.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    The site is in English. So it’s just like are you going to judge them for not being native speakers of English and perhaps sometimes making mistakes?
  - allarm 3y ago
    How’s that a non-native speakers problem?
- p3rls 3y ago
  Listen I watched the movie Hackers as a kid and want to throw my fist up and say yeah too but in reality that's not how it works. These sites in 'Thailand' are very seldom competing on quality in my experience.
gardenhedge 3y ago
So kprofiles provides a service - providing information to those looking for it - be it fans or journalists. I don't get why it shouldn't be ranked high since it's been a valuable resource since 2016?
- p3rls 3y ago
  It's not a question of "ranked high" - it's that they're far and away #1 in our niche when they are quite obviously just another garbage SEO website. If you can't understand that I'm afraid I don't see a point in continuing.
  - narag 3y ago
    Can't you do the same they do? Obviously not about the contents, I believe you when you say yours is so much better, but about the SEO. Isn't it possible to imitate their tactics to a certain extent, without getting equally trashy?
    - p3rls 3y ago
      I mean, yeah we try to score the free SEO wins already (see page titles: UPDATED 2023) but at this point we make enough to pay our small staff and I'm fine working for free on it. I think SEO and quality are basically inversely correlated and if you try to chase SEO you will only create dogshit and have to get lucky with stupid journalists.
      - narag 3y ago
        That's really unfortunate. Best of luck!
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    I visited the site. It has pages of facts about bands and artists.. you might even call them profiles... It also has a forum with a community. I really this as you being frustrated by the competition rather than them doing something nefarious.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
Here's how that Twitter link describes you and your competitors vs. Kprofiles: > A few other people have noticed the quiet success of Kprofiles and have already attempted to copy them. > Some have better content, site structure, and formatting than Kprofiles. > But they just compete with Kprofile's massive backlink profile. So did Kprofiles (a somewhat purple website) come before you (Kpopping) or are you talking about competing for second place with Hallyu Idol (a very purple website)?
- p3rls 3y ago
  I was referring to the former. The waybackmachine confirms they launched around 2016, but with sporadic uptime (apache settings in there) https://web.archive.org/web/20170530121529/http://www.kprofiles.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170530121529/http://www.kprofi... We were running a beta for that period and launched publicly in July of 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170722070519/https://kpopping.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170722070519/https://kpopping.... Personally I think hallyuidol is even worse but that's another matter. (they are just copying kprofiles but whoever designed it has eyeballs so they have a massive advantage on that front) Right now I have YouTube's API team giving me an audit that is compounding my already overextension on our development. They're telling me I can't do rankings or aggregate data. It's a giant mess and I have another fulltime job so it's not getting the attention it deserves -- still it's miles ahead of its competitors and I don't see how that's even debatable.

by p3rls 3y ago

aktenlage 3y ago

Is there a way to read it without an ex-twitter account? I just see the first tweet

Scandiravian 3y ago
Here you go https://nitter.net/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929 https://nitter.net/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929

rwmj 3y ago

I don't get it. kprofiles sounds like it provides a service. It might not be a great one or one I'm interested in, but collating all that information about K-Pop bands and publishing one or two articles a day is non-trivial.

p3rls 3y ago
I would argue that the word trivial is exactly what would describe their entire operation.
yterdy 3y ago
>ran by non-native English speakers that gets hacked every few months with a redirect to porn or russian sites. I imagine that this would be a problem.
- p3rls 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/KProfiles_com/with_replies https://twitter.com/KProfiles_com/with_replies What's amusing is they think it's "rival websites" hacking them with redirects to russian purse sites

lovemenot 3y ago

I see your point and mostly sympathise. It's relevant to the topic and provides a personal perspective. >> ran by non-native English speakers I feel this clause doesn't help promote your grievance. A big promise of the Web was that it was World-Wide. If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality, all the better. I get that your specific competitors didn't excel - except in ranking. But, in principle, good wishes to global competition.

l33t7332273 3y ago
> If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality For many users, a foundational element of the quality of a website is that is in English; it’s all they speak.
- zztop44 3y ago
  The site is in English. So it’s just like are you going to judge them for not being native speakers of English and perhaps sometimes making mistakes?
- allarm 3y ago
  How’s that a non-native speakers problem?
p3rls 3y ago
Listen I watched the movie Hackers as a kid and want to throw my fist up and say yeah too but in reality that's not how it works. These sites in 'Thailand' are very seldom competing on quality in my experience.

gardenhedge 3y ago

So kprofiles provides a service - providing information to those looking for it - be it fans or journalists. I don't get why it shouldn't be ranked high since it's been a valuable resource since 2016?

p3rls 3y ago
It's not a question of "ranked high" - it's that they're far and away #1 in our niche when they are quite obviously just another garbage SEO website. If you can't understand that I'm afraid I don't see a point in continuing.
- narag 3y ago
  Can't you do the same they do? Obviously not about the contents, I believe you when you say yours is so much better, but about the SEO. Isn't it possible to imitate their tactics to a certain extent, without getting equally trashy?
  - p3rls 3y ago
    I mean, yeah we try to score the free SEO wins already (see page titles: UPDATED 2023) but at this point we make enough to pay our small staff and I'm fine working for free on it. I think SEO and quality are basically inversely correlated and if you try to chase SEO you will only create dogshit and have to get lucky with stupid journalists.
    - narag 3y ago
      That's really unfortunate. Best of luck!
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  I visited the site. It has pages of facts about bands and artists.. you might even call them profiles... It also has a forum with a community. I really this as you being frustrated by the competition rather than them doing something nefarious.

hombre_fatal 3y ago

Here's how that Twitter link describes you and your competitors vs. Kprofiles: > A few other people have noticed the quiet success of Kprofiles and have already attempted to copy them. > Some have better content, site structure, and formatting than Kprofiles. > But they just compete with Kprofile's massive backlink profile. So did Kprofiles (a somewhat purple website) come before you (Kpopping) or are you talking about competing for second place with Hallyu Idol (a very purple website)?

p3rls 3y ago
I was referring to the former. The waybackmachine confirms they launched around 2016, but with sporadic uptime (apache settings in there) https://web.archive.org/web/20170530121529/http://www.kprofiles.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170530121529/http://www.kprofi... We were running a beta for that period and launched publicly in July of 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170722070519/https://kpopping.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170722070519/https://kpopping.... Personally I think hallyuidol is even worse but that's another matter. (they are just copying kprofiles but whoever designed it has eyeballs so they have a massive advantage on that front) Right now I have YouTube's API team giving me an audit that is compounding my already overextension on our development. They're telling me I can't do rankings or aggregate data. It's a giant mess and I have another fulltime job so it's not getting the attention it deserves -- still it's miles ahead of its competitors and I don't see how that's even debatable.