Did Obama fans flag anti-Obama blogs as SPAM or did Google play politics in shutdown?
By KBDay Posted in Blogosphere — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Owners of blogs affiliated with the anti-Obama movement Just Say No Deal are infuriated because their blogs were shut down by Google after the sites were identified as SPAM. It’s tempting to believe Google, whose political leanings are popularly interpreted as leftist, came up with a sly algorithm to shut the blogs down. But a more likely scenario is that pro-Obama types flagged the blogs by using the link on the Blogger site where the affected blogs were hosted. If your blog is flagged, you can be deprived of your journal posting privileges until Google checks out the accusation and restores your rights. The irony here is that the Just Say No Deal blogs are actually Democratic leaners. They're just Democrats who don't want Obama as their nominee.
I confess I've often wondered why my conservative site The US Report doesn't carry near as many search referrals from Google as my less political Covering Florida blog.
The Washington Times broke the story, noting “several blogs” were shut down. But the blog Come a Long Way, recently moved to Wordpress, listed 7 blogs. The only other place I read about this was Accuracy in Media.
So did pro-Obama fans flag the blogs or did Google sidetrack them in a passive show of support for the Illinois senator? Is there really a way to prove either unless Google supplies the data?
Flip the coin. If a bunch of progressive pro-Obama blogs were shut down, cries would be heard across the nation. Cries of racism would resonate. Pharmacies would have to stay open later to dispense additional meds so great would be the anxiety. But shutting down anti-Obama blogs draws few headlines even on a slow news week. I wish I could say I am surprised, but sometimes, we grownups accept we don’t always get what we wish for.
You're right about CF rank--but that blog is way older so I know that and the backlinks count. But here's the thing. From day 1 with CF, Google was the primary referrer (among search engines) to my site. From day 1 with The US Report, Yahoo was. So I thought that was strange--this is true even when I have a hot story at TUSR. I do think Google could clear the whole thing up just by disclosing what happened (Sunshine is good for corporate too as long as trade secrets aren't disclosed.)
On advertising, I'd be happy to swap a small ad with you--I'm really not set up to do direct ads at CF. The ads there are affiliates.
Can't resist this comment--on "Broadly speaking, liberalism..."--that is also a broad statement that could apply to a true conservative. See what our parties have done with our ideal? :>)
When I said Google could dlear the whole thing up, I meant the blog incidents (not my referrals mystery). best, Kay
Google definitely throws some extra love blogspot's way :)
Yahoo and Google rank differently. On a site I was justing looking at (still open) I'm ranked #3 for my main keyword in Google and #100 in yahoo. I have another site in this exact same vertical and I rank #1 in yahoo (for the same keyword) and about 16 in Google.
When I talked about advertisements, I was talking about something more subtle...
"Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. ... including extensive freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market or mixed economy,
Yep, you're right on blogspot, and I fully understand that simply because it's a Google property. I like to look at how people find my site too--at CF, yahoo hasn't sent me very much. On the other hand, a couple pieces I did were cited in Wikipedia, giving me the (dubious to some) honor of many referrals from that mention. I don't have a lot of formal training in Internet marketing, tho I've certainly had to learn to market my work to survive as a freelancer over the years. The potential on the Web is very exciting to me, though. I don't know that there's ever been a more intriguing time to live.
On subtlety, just let me know whatever you had in mind. I do from time to time write about those I come across in my blog venturing.
best, Kay
-I confess I've often wondered why my conservative site The US Report doesn't carry near as many search referrals from Google as my less political Covering Florida blog.-
I do internet marketing and took a quick look. Based on what I saw quickly, I would expect that Covering Florida would get many, many, many more google referrals than TheUSreport.
Why?
CF is has a Page Rank of 5, which is pretty good - good enough, i might want to advertise with you :)
It has almost 4000 incoming links and those links are aged nicely. You are also on blogspot and pickup a boost there.
TheUSreport has a Page Rank zero! It has about a quarter the number of inbound links and those links are not of the same quality.
No conspiracy here - things are as they should be.
"Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. ... including extensive freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market or mixed economy,