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MetaFilter should definitely nofollow their external links in the comments. That makes sure that spammy/unnatural links do not count as a vote (which turns Meta

MetaFilter should definitely nofollow their external links in the comments. That makes sure that spammy/unnatural links do not count as a vote (which turns MetaFilter into a bad neighborhood as far as search engines are concerned, and attracts the spammers). ... <a href="#">Sample</a>, an Indian online pharmacy. I have not ordered from them myself. ... They should look real hard at their site structure and which pages they allow to be indexed. Too many vague subdomains, and 'posts tagged with...' in the index. I wonder what their user metrics show to Google. I don't think Google is penalizing sites based on a mere hunch, or won't notice that a site like MetaFilter got hit by an algorithmic update. This site is someone's child, so it's hard to be too critical, but the view that MetaFilter hosts the quality content of the internet is far too rosy. Pages full like: http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc Which are veiled spam pages. Pages full of inane babble about medical issues or personal drama, with the credibility and authority of a Yahoo Answers page. Just because people paid MetaFilter to post, and a site is heavily moderated, does not mean it adds anything to the search results for most generic search terms. Then most links or interesting stories are from elsewhere on the web. MetaFilter is kinda like trying to rank with the old Digg comments: not the best place on the internet to read a discussion surrounding a topic. Why deserve to rank for linking to a funny or controversial news article, and riling up 15 comments or so? In the end there may be far more natural reasons for this. The user signals showed something was wrong with the site. People bounced a lot (be it the design, be it because you can't comment without paying, be it because 15 random internet comments have little value). In the meantime Reddit and other sites grew to large communities. You don't see Reddit comment threads ranking all too high either, unless they are really special, popular or significant, like the president doing an AMA.

pessimizer 12y ago
There's absolutely nothing spammy about http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc, and if it has to be excluded from the internet because it contains two links to the website of a product along with discussion of that product between two dozen people - your search is broken, not the page. I'm not sure when it became alright to exclude "inane babble" from the internet, but I'm not comfortable with an algorithmic measure of lack of interestingness or quality being judged as an attack. I also think that it's moving the goalposts from detecting destructive or deceptive content to defining what all content on the internet should look like.
- blauwbilgorgel 12y ago
  That page is commercial spam (or "veiled spam"). It serves no other purpose than to get a link to his own product site, no discussion, no nothing. Just: For the special price of 999 Euro you can get your own. How is that quality content? It is also spammy in that it doesn't nofollow external links on comments. Those links should have been nofollowed like 6 years ago. That they still aren't, is telling about MetaFilter's knowledge on SEO. You know that Google sees your site linking to bad sites, and what do you do? Complain about it? Fire people due to an update 2 years ago? Or do you simply take action to fix it? MetaFilter doesn't have to be (and isn't) excluded from the internet. It just doesn't have to rank well for terms like "Gomboc". It became alright to derank "inane babble" the moment it increased the satisfaction of search engine users. Which is pretty much from the beginning of search engines. It is user metrics that count. Statistics don't lie. It does not matter that you are uncomfortable with an algorithm. I think I don't get your "judged as an attack"-part. The alternative is not using a search engine that relies on algorithms. I did a casual investigation of MetaFilter. It has not changed much over the years. The pages I did look at were all of the level of "inane babble". One line comments. Puns. Not adding much to an already thin topic. Perfectly alright to have a place on the internet to debate how to get your friend to take Viagra. But not much need to rank that for men's health topics, relationship advice or even Viagra. http://ask.metafilter.com/57406/Bright-light-flashes-in-my-right-eye http://ask.metafilter.com/57406/Bright-light-flashes-in-my-r... Now would you want to find that page when you are searching for those symptoms? Or would you want credible medical advice? If it is moving the goalposts, it is moving the goalposts to better quality content. Those visitors not going to MetaFilter are not gone, they are catered to by other sites. Every tag on MetaFilter has a specialist site now. Ranking MetaFilter so high before 2012 was a present. MetaFilter doesn't deserve to be deranked any further, but it doesn't deserve huge pre-2012 rankings either. In my experience, todays SERPS are much better than ever before, and the complaints are biased, reminiscing good old times or influenced by the fact that some paid to post on that site (You'll defend it, as you don't want to back a losing horse, and your experiences with the site are probably good).
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    >It serves no other purpose than to get a link to his own product site You've simply made this up. The poster (gleuschk) may have some undetectable connection to the product (just like you or I may have one), but it's the only post that he/she ever made about it. Judging by a skim of their thousand comment history on the site, what gleuschk seems to have is an interest in mathematics. http://www.metafilter.com/user/2666 http://www.metafilter.com/user/2666 You could have figured that out with a click, though. Does the fact that you didn't bother make your comments inane enough to be filtered off of the internet as a spamlink for metafilter? Can you detect that with an algorithm? Thanks for the link, though. I remember seeing that shape on a spam segment of a documentary on PBS a number of years ago, and it was nice to be reminded of it. edit: From your examples of bad pages on metafilter, I know that I don't want you vetting what is or isn't quality content on the internet, yet I still trust you more than some associative algorithm.
hagbardgroup 12y ago
This is why it happened. Mystery over. 99% of the time, "we didn't do nuffin" means that the site's moderation was not as tight as once thought. Ignorance isn't really an excuse on this, because it takes five minutes to explain to people nofollow vs. followed links. However, when you explain it to people, 99% of the time, they will continue breaking the rules because they have time preference issues: they know that they benefit from their site passing rank in the present, and the penalty is an unknown quantity in the future.

pessimizer 12y ago

There's absolutely nothing spammy about http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc, and if it has to be excluded from the internet because it contains two links to the website of a product along with discussion of that product between two dozen people - your search is broken, not the page. I'm not sure when it became alright to exclude "inane babble" from the internet, but I'm not comfortable with an algorithmic measure of lack of interestingness or quality being judged as an attack. I also think that it's moving the goalposts from detecting destructive or deceptive content to defining what all content on the internet should look like.

blauwbilgorgel 12y ago
That page is commercial spam (or "veiled spam"). It serves no other purpose than to get a link to his own product site, no discussion, no nothing. Just: For the special price of 999 Euro you can get your own. How is that quality content? It is also spammy in that it doesn't nofollow external links on comments. Those links should have been nofollowed like 6 years ago. That they still aren't, is telling about MetaFilter's knowledge on SEO. You know that Google sees your site linking to bad sites, and what do you do? Complain about it? Fire people due to an update 2 years ago? Or do you simply take action to fix it? MetaFilter doesn't have to be (and isn't) excluded from the internet. It just doesn't have to rank well for terms like "Gomboc". It became alright to derank "inane babble" the moment it increased the satisfaction of search engine users. Which is pretty much from the beginning of search engines. It is user metrics that count. Statistics don't lie. It does not matter that you are uncomfortable with an algorithm. I think I don't get your "judged as an attack"-part. The alternative is not using a search engine that relies on algorithms. I did a casual investigation of MetaFilter. It has not changed much over the years. The pages I did look at were all of the level of "inane babble". One line comments. Puns. Not adding much to an already thin topic. Perfectly alright to have a place on the internet to debate how to get your friend to take Viagra. But not much need to rank that for men's health topics, relationship advice or even Viagra. http://ask.metafilter.com/57406/Bright-light-flashes-in-my-right-eye http://ask.metafilter.com/57406/Bright-light-flashes-in-my-r... Now would you want to find that page when you are searching for those symptoms? Or would you want credible medical advice? If it is moving the goalposts, it is moving the goalposts to better quality content. Those visitors not going to MetaFilter are not gone, they are catered to by other sites. Every tag on MetaFilter has a specialist site now. Ranking MetaFilter so high before 2012 was a present. MetaFilter doesn't deserve to be deranked any further, but it doesn't deserve huge pre-2012 rankings either. In my experience, todays SERPS are much better than ever before, and the complaints are biased, reminiscing good old times or influenced by the fact that some paid to post on that site (You'll defend it, as you don't want to back a losing horse, and your experiences with the site are probably good).
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >It serves no other purpose than to get a link to his own product site You've simply made this up. The poster (gleuschk) may have some undetectable connection to the product (just like you or I may have one), but it's the only post that he/she ever made about it. Judging by a skim of their thousand comment history on the site, what gleuschk seems to have is an interest in mathematics. http://www.metafilter.com/user/2666 http://www.metafilter.com/user/2666 You could have figured that out with a click, though. Does the fact that you didn't bother make your comments inane enough to be filtered off of the internet as a spamlink for metafilter? Can you detect that with an algorithm? Thanks for the link, though. I remember seeing that shape on a spam segment of a documentary on PBS a number of years ago, and it was nice to be reminded of it. edit: From your examples of bad pages on metafilter, I know that I don't want you vetting what is or isn't quality content on the internet, yet I still trust you more than some associative algorithm.

hagbardgroup 12y ago

This is why it happened. Mystery over. 99% of the time, "we didn't do nuffin" means that the site's moderation was not as tight as once thought. Ignorance isn't really an excuse on this, because it takes five minutes to explain to people nofollow vs. followed links. However, when you explain it to people, 99% of the time, they will continue breaking the rules because they have time preference issues: they know that they benefit from their site passing rank in the present, and the penalty is an unknown quantity in the future.