kometbomb

Programming and stuff.

Tag Archives: StumbleUpon

13 Mar

SEO Is Bullshit

Sorry for the characteristic blog post with the quote and the link but I thought this article was a good read:

Two weeks ago I said that SEO is bullshit and the SEO community promptly got their knickers in a twist. The post was labelled everything from “sensationalist crap” to “linkbait”, but I was still left searching for a solid counter-argument. Even Richard Hearne, one of Ireland’s better known SEOs, decided not to engage in the discussion because my post was “so wide of the mark”. But then why the hype? Why the anger? Don’t tell me there might be some truth to my argument? SEO is bullshit and the SEOs know it too.

I get a lot of SEO pages on StumbleUpon which really riles me up for two reasons: I’m literally drowning in SEO stumbles and, most importantly, because I agree wholeheartedly with this article. I hope the right people will read it.

Sometimes, after reading one of those stumble out of boredom, I can’t but think the line between actual SEO advice and the content (crap) SE spammers spew out is blurred. I guess anything connected to SEO is so little about actual valuable content and advice (outside of best practices), it taints the little good there possibly could be. It very much reminds me of all those self-help gurus with their painfully obvious advice (and painfully inflated prices). Sometimes, it feels like the whole SEO inner circle is something Louis Theroux should investigate.

I am quite sure the only people who benefit of the whole SEO phenomenon are those who sell snake oil consult other spammers optimizers.

“SEO, for lack of a better word, is bullshit” — though, I guess it sadly “captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit”.

03 Sep

StumbleUpon on StumbleUpon and other stuff off the top of my head

I’m quite sure everyone using StumbleUpon has noticed this and feels the same but it really annoys me how you get tons and tons of stumbles about SU in general. I don’t think anyone who uses SU needs a basic introduction. I can’t figure out any good reason for people to keep thumbing up those pages. Which reminds me of a few things about StumbleUpon that I think are not that great.

The whole concept of thumbing sites up or down is a bit confusing affair: often I want to see more pages that I disagree with (I like to amuse myself with that kind of material). So, do I thumb the page up and look like a creationist-racist-whatever to other people, or do I thumb it down and get less unintentionally hilarious pages? They should have two ratings for pages based on if you agree with the page and if you took time to read the page (because, like, this may shock you but SU is mainly for wasting your time).

One thing I think would be nice is that you could explicitly tell SU to send you pages with the specified tags. And, even more valuable would be if you could tell it to never send you any pages with some tag. I’m subscribed to something that sends me tons of SEO tips (i.e. search engine optimizing, the art of creating pages that get a lot of visits thanks to dubious means of getting the page first on Google results instead of because the page kicks ass) that I don’t necessarily agree with nor want to see more of them. However, it is hard to stop receiving those pages and still get the other pages in the category. It would be very convenient to have a filter that filtered out pages with a suitable tag. Maybe the filter should work a bit like how you search the Web, i.e. you would have a search box on the SU toolbar and you would type in a query, and each click on the “Stumble!” button would give the next search result.

Which brings to my last complaint: more tags, please. Even automated tagging would help a lot. After all, in the above case, pages about SEO would be easy to spot because they tend to contain the said term a lot. Or, the term tower defense. God, I hate all those TD games. Also, if you are just submitting a new web proxy site, please die. Those can’t be that profitable.