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71 points by benologist 13y ago

minimaxir 13y ago
Related: FindTheBest's case study on TechCrunch: http://www.findthebest.com/partner-with-us http://www.findthebest.com/partner-with-us Odd that AOL chose to partner with FindTheBest, considering that AOL already has a business partnership to gdgt through Engadget.
rhizome 13y ago
Is this in addition to those silly "Elsewhere on the Web" "You may also be interested in" garbage units every half-assed news site and blog runs?
- minimaxir 13y ago
  That's usually either 1) a stupid Wordpress plugin that everyone uses since no publisher cares about UX or 2) Disqus, which opts into displaying ads with comments, for fortunately is easy to opt out of.
  - leokun 13y ago
    No he's talking about Taboola or Outbrain. Taboola shows up everywhere now. It's those little images at the bottom of pages like on VentureBeat that have nothing the fuck to do with anything and are just noisy bullshit that make the internet worse. There's usually some kind of cleavage or weird picture to get you to notice and click. It's bullshit and no self-respecting sites would never add such a thing.
    - sudomal 13y ago
      Yeah, those sorts of services have been around for several years. I was approached by one a long time ago, but it just seemed too spammy for me. They aren't as bad as the ads that underline keywords in content, but I wouldn't use them.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      As demonstrated by the fact that many data driven sites use Taboola/Outbrain (including one I used to work for), users either don't care about them or care about them so little that it is offset by the increased revenue. In fact, as demonstrated by the fact that Taboola/Outbrain get paid when users click, users appear to actually like some of their content. If users don't mind and actually click through, is it really fair to describe it as "bullshit"?
      - leokun 13y ago
        I guess you could apply that same argument to spam emails. A very convincing argument.
        yummyfajitas 13y ago
        The problem with spam email is that it operates with a push model - i.e., spam email is forced upon you and you have to do work to avoid it. In contrast, if you want to avoid Taboola/Outbrain, all you need to do is stop asking content sites that use them to send you data (i.e., don't browse Taboola/Outbrain sites).
        leokun 13y ago
        Well I definitely don't go to those sites directly. It's usually via links from sites like Hacker News. Adblock blocks Taboola, but I don't use Adblock. I'm not asking you to solve a personal problem for me. I'm saying Taboola is shit. It offers very little value, and there are just enough of us around to click on things of little value to keep reducing the quality of crap on the internet. There's nothing to be done about than to bitch.
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Thank god for theverge and Ars...
pstack 13y ago
Oh, no. Now how will we discern the regular shitty content from the new fusioned shitty content?
cpncrunch 13y ago
What the fuck are you talking about? It's a buying guide, like the title says. I guess it's cool to put the knife in techcrunch on HN.
- benologist 13y ago
  The thousands of (syndicated) machine-generated pages with scraped product reviews from CNET [1] stuffed with affiliate links, ending with tastefully concealed links to every "[manufacturer] headphones" [2], with no actual relevance or relationship [3] with anything TechCrunch reports on x 5 "guides". It's pretty conventional spam. [1] extra irony: they nofollow all the CNET links to avoid making the links valuable to their competitor [2] http://i.imgur.com/hgVaH3k.png http://i.imgur.com/hgVaH3k.png [3] http://techcrunch.com/tag/headphones/ http://techcrunch.com/tag/headphones/
  - cpncrunch 13y ago
    And why exactly is that bad? Basically they use FindTheBest, which takes info from various sources (not just cnet). I guess AOL either owns FindTheBest or they have an agreement with them. If that is bad, then what do you think of google? Their search engine is a machine-generated series of scraped website snippets, laced with adverts that track practically every site you visit. Also, what do you think of linkedin (which I see you have an account on?) I can't even view your full profile because linkedin want to screw me for some money to even view anyone's profile now. Also they offer to tell you who has viewed your profile if you pay them money. That seems a lot more shitty than what AOL/Techcrunch is doing in my opinion. I think all large companies are evil in some way.
    - benologist 13y ago
      The pages are of no value to the end user and are designed purely to usurp traffic from search engines and shit that traffic out through affiliate links. Instead of getting reviews that matter when you search you get spam tainting the results and getting in your way. You are fundamentally misunderstanding spam when you relate it to what Google and LinkedIn do. What Google does is sift through this shit trying to find the right answer to whatever question. What LinkedIn does has no relevance at all.
crumblan 13y ago
I thought the purpose of TechCrunch was content farming and search engine spamming for startups they have a vested interest in.
ErikAugust 13y ago
Can we page Matt Cutts? Would like to hear his thoughts on something like this...
- tristanperry 13y ago
  I think that Google are aware of this. As above, small and large businesses used to do this sort of thing. The animal updates then killed off small businesses who done this, but there was no real negative impact on the bigger guys/the brands. I'm sure it sounds cynical, but I don't think this was a coincidence.
marban 13y ago
Yes, it's an unethical, poisonous, money-grabbing pattern that should be banned but aren't there enough folks on HN that are actually making money off of something like this? Talk about the many scraping, passive-income, etc. threads.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  Used to work until 2009 or so. Even NYT had shopping.com/ Mysimon /Pricegrabber style sections with borrowed content. The idea is that since NYT is trusted everything there ranks high, and it did. Now it does again since the pendulum has gone so far on the "big brands can do no wrong" side. It's all Google induced and Google cannot find the power to penalize big brands, other than a half-assed 2 week or so demotion. Today, US Today has eHow powered sections for examples and they rank extremely high.
  - marban 13y ago
    ...rank extremely high For broad terms or real long-tail stuff?
kbar13 13y ago
> sort by user ratings > see http://headphones.techcrunch.com/l/904/Razer-Electra http://headphones.techcrunch.com/l/904/Razer-Electra > close tab and never visit that website ever again
- fastball 13y ago
  What's wrong with Razer Electra Headphones?
- sp332 13y ago
  That's odd, since the bars below the 5-star rating claim no one has rated the headphones yet.
bsullivan01 13y ago
Why they do it? Because it works (until it hits HN front page). From my experience, running client sites, Google is blindly trusting anything from big brands, screwing the small business sites. It's almost like content quality doesn't matter at all, especially after all the animal updates (Panda, Penguin etc.) Small sites are desperate as they have lost as much as 90% of traffic for no apparent reason. It must be profitable for Google too, their earnings have skyrocketed since then, even as they hit a plateau in market share. Occam's razor and all. Edit: The competing theories as to why Google does it are that Google wants to shake small business into advertising, considering that brands already do. Once you lose traffic you can advertise or close doors. Another one is that so-so search results are better to increase ad clicks. Considering that Google has a monopoly and still a strong brand, the second theory cannot be ruled out.
- eksith 13y ago
  If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads. I feel some people are far too concerned with getting onto the top of Google rather than improving the scaffolding to their sites and driving organic traffic back.
  - bsullivan01 13y ago
    If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. Now I believe it is true, would not have believed it a few years ago. This Larry Page era is full of surprises, and lets remember that all his pet projects (Android, Google+, X etc) are tolerated by investors because earnings are being increased by 20%+ a year. So Google has to do all it can to increase CPC and number of clicks. The ads on pages have been maximized and then some so they need to resort to tricks and penalties for sites. IMO, this is done at senior level Google execs and then Search execs find the excuse to match search algorithms with what's most profitable for Google. So the lowly search engineer is "changing the world" as the execs count the ad clicks, CPC--and their stock options. Who wrote this: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users...But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. " ? Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in academia. >> One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads The problem is that a lot of people use search to find companies, services and products. Getting frozen out of that is a major handicap. We should support alternative SEs so we have a healthy competition.
Aardwolf 13y ago
Wow, what a lovely product description for headphones... "Grado PS1000 The Grado PS1000 headphones cost $1695, which is the most of all Headphones Additionally, the Grado PS1000 have a sensitivity of 98 dB, which is 6 dB lower than the average for all Headphones. "
iaskwhy 13y ago
I'm sorry but I really don't understand what the issue is. I can understand if the problem is that they are using the content from http://head-phones.findthebest.com/ http://head-phones.findthebest.com/ under http://headphones.techcrunch.com/ http://headphones.techcrunch.com/ , not sure if this is ok or not. But about the actual content, is there a problem with a summary of the most important stats of a given list of products?
contextual 13y ago
So we're upvoting this spam content on the front page of HN?
anaphor 13y ago
head-fi is still my go-to source for headphone discussion :)
belowlightsblue 13y ago
AOLs and content farms are nothing new: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/02/02/you-may-not-like-it-but-aols-content-farm-is-the-future-of-online-media/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/02/02/you-may-not-like-it-b... Here's more context about Findthebest with someone from there trying to claim that they have a large editorial team that hand edits the lists http://www.seobook.com/scalable-seo http://www.seobook.com/scalable-seo
necenzurat 13y ago
if you view source it has <meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX" /> why ?
induscreep 13y ago
Audio Technica ATH-M50 no there.

71 points by benologist 13y ago

Related: FindTheBest's case study on TechCrunch: http://www.findthebest.com/partner-with-us http://www.findthebest.com/partner-with-us Odd that AOL chose to partner with FindTheBest, considering that AOL already has a business partnership to gdgt through Engadget.

rhizome 13y ago

Is this in addition to those silly "Elsewhere on the Web" "You may also be interested in" garbage units every half-assed news site and blog runs?

minimaxir 13y ago
That's usually either 1) a stupid Wordpress plugin that everyone uses since no publisher cares about UX or 2) Disqus, which opts into displaying ads with comments, for fortunately is easy to opt out of.
- leokun 13y ago
  No he's talking about Taboola or Outbrain. Taboola shows up everywhere now. It's those little images at the bottom of pages like on VentureBeat that have nothing the fuck to do with anything and are just noisy bullshit that make the internet worse. There's usually some kind of cleavage or weird picture to get you to notice and click. It's bullshit and no self-respecting sites would never add such a thing.
  - sudomal 13y ago
    Yeah, those sorts of services have been around for several years. I was approached by one a long time ago, but it just seemed too spammy for me. They aren't as bad as the ads that underline keywords in content, but I wouldn't use them.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    As demonstrated by the fact that many data driven sites use Taboola/Outbrain (including one I used to work for), users either don't care about them or care about them so little that it is offset by the increased revenue. In fact, as demonstrated by the fact that Taboola/Outbrain get paid when users click, users appear to actually like some of their content. If users don't mind and actually click through, is it really fair to describe it as "bullshit"?
    - leokun 13y ago
      I guess you could apply that same argument to spam emails. A very convincing argument.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        The problem with spam email is that it operates with a push model - i.e., spam email is forced upon you and you have to do work to avoid it. In contrast, if you want to avoid Taboola/Outbrain, all you need to do is stop asking content sites that use them to send you data (i.e., don't browse Taboola/Outbrain sites).
        leokun 13y ago
        Well I definitely don't go to those sites directly. It's usually via links from sites like Hacker News. Adblock blocks Taboola, but I don't use Adblock. I'm not asking you to solve a personal problem for me. I'm saying Taboola is shit. It offers very little value, and there are just enough of us around to click on things of little value to keep reducing the quality of crap on the internet. There's nothing to be done about than to bitch.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

Thank god for theverge and Ars...

pstack 13y ago

Oh, no. Now how will we discern the regular shitty content from the new fusioned shitty content?

cpncrunch 13y ago

What the fuck are you talking about? It's a buying guide, like the title says. I guess it's cool to put the knife in techcrunch on HN.

benologist 13y ago
The thousands of (syndicated) machine-generated pages with scraped product reviews from CNET [1] stuffed with affiliate links, ending with tastefully concealed links to every "[manufacturer] headphones" [2], with no actual relevance or relationship [3] with anything TechCrunch reports on x 5 "guides". It's pretty conventional spam. [1] extra irony: they nofollow all the CNET links to avoid making the links valuable to their competitor [2] http://i.imgur.com/hgVaH3k.png http://i.imgur.com/hgVaH3k.png [3] http://techcrunch.com/tag/headphones/ http://techcrunch.com/tag/headphones/
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  And why exactly is that bad? Basically they use FindTheBest, which takes info from various sources (not just cnet). I guess AOL either owns FindTheBest or they have an agreement with them. If that is bad, then what do you think of google? Their search engine is a machine-generated series of scraped website snippets, laced with adverts that track practically every site you visit. Also, what do you think of linkedin (which I see you have an account on?) I can't even view your full profile because linkedin want to screw me for some money to even view anyone's profile now. Also they offer to tell you who has viewed your profile if you pay them money. That seems a lot more shitty than what AOL/Techcrunch is doing in my opinion. I think all large companies are evil in some way.
  - benologist 13y ago
    The pages are of no value to the end user and are designed purely to usurp traffic from search engines and shit that traffic out through affiliate links. Instead of getting reviews that matter when you search you get spam tainting the results and getting in your way. You are fundamentally misunderstanding spam when you relate it to what Google and LinkedIn do. What Google does is sift through this shit trying to find the right answer to whatever question. What LinkedIn does has no relevance at all.

crumblan 13y ago

I thought the purpose of TechCrunch was content farming and search engine spamming for startups they have a vested interest in.

ErikAugust 13y ago

Can we page Matt Cutts? Would like to hear his thoughts on something like this...

tristanperry 13y ago
I think that Google are aware of this. As above, small and large businesses used to do this sort of thing. The animal updates then killed off small businesses who done this, but there was no real negative impact on the bigger guys/the brands. I'm sure it sounds cynical, but I don't think this was a coincidence.

marban 13y ago

Yes, it's an unethical, poisonous, money-grabbing pattern that should be banned but aren't there enough folks on HN that are actually making money off of something like this? Talk about the many scraping, passive-income, etc. threads.

bsullivan01 13y ago
Used to work until 2009 or so. Even NYT had shopping.com/ Mysimon /Pricegrabber style sections with borrowed content. The idea is that since NYT is trusted everything there ranks high, and it did. Now it does again since the pendulum has gone so far on the "big brands can do no wrong" side. It's all Google induced and Google cannot find the power to penalize big brands, other than a half-assed 2 week or so demotion. Today, US Today has eHow powered sections for examples and they rank extremely high.
- marban 13y ago
  ...rank extremely high For broad terms or real long-tail stuff?

kbar13 13y ago

> sort by user ratings > see http://headphones.techcrunch.com/l/904/Razer-Electra http://headphones.techcrunch.com/l/904/Razer-Electra > close tab and never visit that website ever again

fastball 13y ago
What's wrong with Razer Electra Headphones?
sp332 13y ago
That's odd, since the bars below the 5-star rating claim no one has rated the headphones yet.

bsullivan01 13y ago

Why they do it? Because it works (until it hits HN front page). From my experience, running client sites, Google is blindly trusting anything from big brands, screwing the small business sites. It's almost like content quality doesn't matter at all, especially after all the animal updates (Panda, Penguin etc.) Small sites are desperate as they have lost as much as 90% of traffic for no apparent reason. It must be profitable for Google too, their earnings have skyrocketed since then, even as they hit a plateau in market share. Occam's razor and all. Edit: The competing theories as to why Google does it are that Google wants to shake small business into advertising, considering that brands already do. Once you lose traffic you can advertise or close doors. Another one is that so-so search results are better to increase ad clicks. Considering that Google has a monopoly and still a strong brand, the second theory cannot be ruled out.

eksith 13y ago
If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads. I feel some people are far too concerned with getting onto the top of Google rather than improving the scaffolding to their sites and driving organic traffic back.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  If the shakedown theory is true, and I'm not sure that it is, that's an order of magnitude beyond the evil threshold. Now I believe it is true, would not have believed it a few years ago. This Larry Page era is full of surprises, and lets remember that all his pet projects (Android, Google+, X etc) are tolerated by investors because earnings are being increased by 20%+ a year. So Google has to do all it can to increase CPC and number of clicks. The ads on pages have been maximized and then some so they need to resort to tricks and penalties for sites. IMO, this is done at senior level Google execs and then Search execs find the excuse to match search algorithms with what's most profitable for Google. So the lowly search engineer is "changing the world" as the execs count the ad clicks, CPC--and their stock options. Who wrote this: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users...But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. " ? Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in academia. >> One plus though, businesses still have the option of engaging their local community which may have a stronger effect than just search ads The problem is that a lot of people use search to find companies, services and products. Getting frozen out of that is a major handicap. We should support alternative SEs so we have a healthy competition.

Aardwolf 13y ago

Wow, what a lovely product description for headphones... "Grado PS1000 The Grado PS1000 headphones cost $1695, which is the most of all Headphones Additionally, the Grado PS1000 have a sensitivity of 98 dB, which is 6 dB lower than the average for all Headphones. "

iaskwhy 13y ago

I'm sorry but I really don't understand what the issue is. I can understand if the problem is that they are using the content from http://head-phones.findthebest.com/ http://head-phones.findthebest.com/ under http://headphones.techcrunch.com/ http://headphones.techcrunch.com/ , not sure if this is ok or not. But about the actual content, is there a problem with a summary of the most important stats of a given list of products?

contextual 13y ago

So we're upvoting this spam content on the front page of HN?

anaphor 13y ago

head-fi is still my go-to source for headphone discussion :)

belowlightsblue 13y ago

AOLs and content farms are nothing new: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/02/02/you-may-not-like-it-but-aols-content-farm-is-the-future-of-online-media/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/02/02/you-may-not-like-it-b... Here's more context about Findthebest with someone from there trying to claim that they have a large editorial team that hand edits the lists http://www.seobook.com/scalable-seo http://www.seobook.com/scalable-seo

necenzurat 13y ago

if you view source it has <meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX" /> why ?

induscreep 13y ago

Audio Technica ATH-M50 no there.