Hi Patrick - thanks for your feedback and analysis, I really appreciate it.
You're absolutely right that there is not much content on that page exclusive of navigation, but in its defense the whole point of the page is navigation :) And it is just one page out of hundreds of thousands of pages on the site, many of which do have a lot of content.
I like your point about leaf nodes. Many of the domains that rank now either have a small # of pages total, or are extremely large brands with a lot of "trust", however Google defines it. In fact, these factors seem to outweigh having any original or useful content on the page itself in many cases (see post below).
If the problem is about too many leaf nodes, then cutting down "thin" content nodes (pages with little content, photo pages, etc) should have a positive effect. We've done a lot of this, so it will be interesting to see if that is the case.
Hi Patrick - Our goal isn't to charge money to customers who already know about existing brands, but to provide first-hand information ABOUT that brand that customers wouldn't otherwise learn from other sites (including the brand itself).
We've been focused on hotels in this specific example, but the same argument could be applied to any travel destination. If you're planning a trip somewhere, would you only want to get information from the official tourist bureau and the hotels themselves, or would it also be beneficial to see candid reviews, blogs, and photos, and interact directly with other travelers who have been to the same place? I would argue that the value provided by that information is worth a lot more than 2%.
The average traveler researches 2-5 sites before booking. and a large % of them are motivated by a desire to read reviews (http://www.phocuswright.com/library/fyi/427). Clearly there is some value provided there, and if we can provide relevant and unique information that leads to a sale, or profit off the sharing of such information through unobtrusive advertisements, then I don't see any problem with that.
And if we can provide more useful information than our competition (many of those sites listed above have almost no original information at all), then I also see no problem with ranking higher in the search results.
That's not to say we are 100% there yet for every destination, but I believe we do have a ton of valuable information, and our goal is to get to 100%.
Hi Walter - Thanks for posting your site and describing the changes you've made as well. It's interesting that you've focused on spelling/grammar errors (despite it being a slang site), and still haven't noticed any improvements.
We have a lot of members from around the world, who may not have English as their first language. We've thought about correcting some spelling/grammar programatically, but since we have a UGC site, and each review is tied to a real person, it seems disingenuous to rewrite someone else's words.
"Grammar, punctuation and style are part of how we decide if a review is credible. For Zappos to artificially inflate the credibility of reviews by changing those qualities is a form of fraud IMO."
I don't know if I'd call it fraud, but it certainly artificially inflates the credibility of reviews, and that's something (in addition to the rewriting someone else's thoughts part) we don't feel comfortable doing.
(For your site, since it's a dictionary, seems like a better fix and I'm surprised that it hasn't yielded any improvements)
Thanks, that's helpful information as well. I didn't know about the 410. We used to 301 some pages, but ran into duplicate content issues where Google would continually spider old 301'd URLs (even when there were no longer links pointing to the original bad URL).
Hi Joel - Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful and you do make a lot of valid points, especially about travel affiliates. We definitely aren't trying to rank for "Hawaii Hotels". Those links are intended as a sitemap to help people find our review pages, many of which I believe we do have valuable, original content.
As a concrete example following the Hawaii theme, we used to rank pretty well when someone searched for "Hale Koa Hotel" (a hotel in Hawaii).
It's got a few detailed reviews and candid photos from active members of the site. Certainly not perfect, but I think it's helpful and that it provides a different perspective. Right now it's ranked #55 on my browser, and here is a sampling of the sites that rank above it:
I'm not arguing we should be #1, or even #10, but we're certainly better than many of the sites between #1 and #55, and we've seen this pattern repeat itself for most of the hotels and pages we have original and unique content for. While we certainly don't have as many hotel reviews as TripAdvisor, we do have more quality reviews than most other sites, and we have to start somewhere :)
I guess a better question would be, if we have 75,000 reviews, what is the best way of internally linking to them within our site WITHOUT looking like a link farm? We're just trying to put our best content forward, so any suggestions would be appreciated!
Hi Jerry - I don't know anyone who works in search quality at Google, and they have said a few times that they aren't going to make any manual exceptions. I've filed a "reconsideration request" with Google, and only got a boilerplate response saying our site has "no manual penalties". Unfortunately, any spam report, reconsideration request, or communication via the Webmaster Tools interface seemingly goes to a black hole. I wouldn't even know who to contact or how to contact them.
I can understand why they can't reveal too much about their algorithm, but at the same time if they want to build a "healthier web ecosystem" I think they have to do a better job of communicating with legitimate webmasters (this is going to be the subject of a future post). There is so much uncertainty out there that I think even legitimate site owners are afraid to speak out for fear of being punished, when instead they should be working together with Google to help improve things. It's like the attitude is: if you're doing well, don't say anything or you might draw Google's scrutiny (especially because you're probably doing something shady), and if you are doing badly don't say anything either because Google will just punish you more (because they have not told you why you have been punished in the first place). So instead people are driven to anonymous postings on random forums where wild misinformation spreads.
The intent of this post wasn't to focus on why our particular site wasn't ranking well anymore in Google, but to try to see if there were other website owners out there who feel comfortable coming out with their stories, and to share anything they may have learned. Again, there is so little real information coming from Google that most people I know have just been grasping at straws, so it would be great to hear other people's stories. I recently read about another seemingly legit site with lots of good content punished (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=...), so there must be more of them out there.
I run a large site that was unexpectedly affected by Google's "Panda" update. There has been a lot of talk on the subject, but most of it is FUD, and I haven't seen many large sites lay everything out for discussion. This is the first post (of many planned ones) about our experience with Google's "Panda" update.
Hopefully it will generate some good discussion from those facing a similar situation, and help some other people out.
Update from the bottom of the article: "the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation."
A lot of it just takes experience and practice. There are a few good books available. "The Knack" by Norm Brodsky is very good, and the source of the "You don't ask, you don't get quote". The chapter on negotiation is small, but the rest of the book contains tons of invaluable insight.
Many books stress formulating a "win-win" situation, and "expanding the pie" so that "everybody wins". This is good in theory, but rare in practice. In almost every negotiation someone will have the upper hand.
I think the best approach is to listen carefully and try to understand the other party's need. This may not necessarily be more money. Maybe they want to build a long term relationship. Maybe they are willing to lower the price if you pay upfront, or provide a larger deposit, because they prefer the cashflow now. Maybe business is slow. You never know.
You also need to know your best alternative. If you have options, it is easy to walk away from the deal. If you are informed, you will know the true market price. You can't be afraid to walk away. I think it just takes time and practice to develop this mentality, and the opposing side can typically sense if you're serious about it or not.
A strategy that has worked well for me is to just say something like "I really like your product/service, and would love to start using it, but the price is a bit out of my range. Is there any way you can give me a discount?". It doesn't work for everything, but I've been surprised how often it does work. The worst thing that happens is that they say no. Remember, you have to ask!
Sure, as long as you keep the page ad and link free, I would certainly appreciate the offer to have it hosted. I want the content to speak for itself. Maybe you can just add a small "credit" link at the bottom to my HN profile. Cheers --
Do people actually think you are unemployed, or do they just think that what you are doing cannot possibly support you full-time/comfortably?
I experience the second reaction fairly commonly. People ask me what my job is, I explain it to them, and then they inevitably follow-up with "Is that profitable?" or "You work on that full-time?" -- basically, some variant of "that sounds like a nice hobby, kid, but what do you really do?"
I think it stems partly from insecurity, and partly from lack of understanding.
The insecurity part comes from the fact that most people don't want to actually believe that you can be successful by working for yourself. Many people dream about working for themselves or starting their own company, but few are willing to take the actual risk. When they see other people fail, it confirms that their decision to take the "safe" path was the correct one, and makes them feel better about themselves. This may seem really cynical, but I've experienced the reaction enough to believe it. Felix Dennis, founder of Maxim magazine and a publishing empire, also talks about this behavior a lot in his book "How To Get Rich" (tacky title, great book).
You mention that you're not a materialist. In that case, does it really matter if other people don't take you seriously, or fail to give you the respect you might deserve? Presumably, your friends should understand enough about your situation and business not to make such job offers. And if it's someone that you have to impress by handing out a fancy business card or driving a fancy car, and if they won't take you seriously without one, is that someone you want to be associating with anyway?
Hi David -- There are a few sites like that. You could try travbuddy.com if you are interested in meeting travelers by location or showing them around your hometown, although it has less of a tech slant. couchsurfing.org has more of a backpacking focus, but they also have regular meet-ups around the world.
I no longer live in the Bay Area (am in Los Angeles now), but, as an avid surfer and entrepreneur as well thought I'd chime in with some comments.
First off, I agree with a lot of the comments here. Living in a new place isn't going to magically cause you to work less or more. This is largely based on your own mentality, regardless of location. There is always going to be more work to do, no matter where you live, if you want to work 90 hour weeks. You have to set your own limits and stick to them; geography isn't going to change that for you.
If surfing is important to you, and it's something that gets you away from the office multiple times a week, you should seriously consider moving to somewhere closer to the beach. Especially if your health is suffering otherwise, and you want to be in decent physical or mental shape to continue doing it for the rest of your life.
I agree with this to a point, but I think that it is also important to test out ads from an early stage, just to see how "viable" the business model really is.
There are so many variations in placement, eCPM, clickthrough, etc across different sites that the only real way to know whether or not something works for a particular site is to test it. Without this sort of testing, it's difficult to gauge how much you really have to grow to become viable.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of companies use this argument to justify a non-sustainable business model, in the hopes that once they get enough "eyeballs", the monetization will follow. So they don't put up any ads at all, then when they do eventually put them up, they are likely to be shocked at the actual (likely to be much, much lower) earnings.
Another advantage to putting up ads early is that users become accustomed to them from the start. Going from no ads to ads, especially after a community has grown used to the concept of no ads at all, can cause the same loss of users.
Wraps around the wrist, and has an alarm that vibrates so that (theoretically) only you wake up.