Dear HuffPo: Feel Free To Send Techdirt Traffic
from the plus,-google-should-fix-its-seo dept
Let me kick this of by saying that I'm a big fan of The Verge, which has quickly become a top tech site for many. I don't always agree with what's written there (I don't always agree with what's written anywhere!), but it tends to regularly produce high quality work. The Verge is at its best with its long form pieces that combine well-written narrative with great design and layout. A recent example of this was with its excellent history of the American arcade. That story got passed around a bunch -- I know I had it sent to me at least half a dozen times. It's a wonderful story if you haven't read it.It was then interesting to see The Verge's Editor-in-Chief, Joshua Topolsky, take to Twitter to demand that Huffington Post remove a snippet and link to that story.
Formal public request. @bbosker and @huffingtonpost, please remove the content you've scraped from us. huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/the… Seriously.
— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) January 23, 2013
In response Topolsky explained more that his problem with it was that it hurt The Verge's SEO (search engine optimization) on such stories.@joshuatopolsky that was a story we linked out to on huffpost to drive traffic/readers to The Verge, which it looks like it did 1/2
— Bianca Bosker (@bbosker) January 23, 2013
What's most egregious about this @huffingtonpost scrape is its theft of our SEO on title and text. Google "death of the american arcade"
— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) January 23, 2013
In the meantime, though, having discovered in the past just how much traffic a link from HuffPo can drive, we'd like to offer up Techdirt as a site that HuffPo can freely link to whenever they want. We won't complain to them. Though, if Google ranks them higher in search, we might complain to Google...
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Filed Under: aggregating, huffington post, linking, seo, the verge, traffic
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In some ways The Verge should be happy that the Huffington Post got a better SEO than they were able to get on their own. First, the Huffington Post linking to an article probably helps the SEO of The Verge. Second, apparently the HuffPo had something going for it that Verge did not. Whatever it was, the HuffPo managed to get the link higher in the ranking than Verge. Complaining about that is like a quarterback complaining that the running back gets the ball further down the field than he does himself. You have to remember that the objective is to get the ball down the field as far as possible, and you have to realize that it doesn't really matter whose name is associated with the run as long as points go on the scoreboard. In this case the objective of The Verge should be to get the link as high on the page as possible, and it doesn't really matter whose name it is under as long as the traffic comes back to Verge.
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Keyword "theft"
Someone else may have possible gotten a benefit from something that is incorrectly believed to be property, therefore it is theft and a wrong must be avenged.
Any benefits are irrelevant in the face of the mindless blind rage of entitlement.
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Re: Keyword "theft"
Even if we grant the odd premise that HuffPo 'stole' their SEO ranking, it still doesn't make sense since a Google ranking is something you earn, not buy or own.
Again granting the even more confusing premise that someone can 'own' a ranking, even then it would be Google that 'owns' it not the website being ranked.
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Re: Keyword "theft"
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Re: Keyword "theft"
What's next, "thought theft"? "Theft theft"? "Theft" doesn't even look like a word anymore.
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Who uses Twitter
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Re: Who uses Twitter
So, in my brain's frenzied attempt at a sensible explanation for their actions, they thought they were publicly shaming HuffPo for "stealing" from them, but ended up only shaming themselves for their poor grasp of how the internet works.
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The Verge appears to be headed by one that doesn't get the internet is nothing but a huge copy machine. Your computer doesn't work without grabbing a copy of that webpage for display. No one stole nothing as the original site and source is still there in it's entirety, much the same as the argument of theft with copywrite. The advance of technology has rendered the old modes of dealing with problems scrambled and no longer accurate.
If the Verge is depending on being first when one searches for one of the topics they originated, maybe it isn't about quality at all but rather numbers of eyes on viewership. These leads me to believe (since I haven't been there it's a guess) that this Verge site depends on advertisement for some or a major part of it's income. So if that is the case, it comes down to greed, pure and simple.
Sorry but no matter how good the quality of somewhere, where I go and support is like when I go to the store to buy something. That is to say, my dollar (or my time) is a commodity I choose where to spend. I don't spend on those products made by companies I don't like. (Hello Mafiaa, getting the message?) Verge has become known to me now by how they act and that tells me I don't need to be there to support them.
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I honestly hadn't thought of this before, but now that you mention it, as of late they've had a rather surprising number of articles that were being dubbed by commentors "troll/link click bait".
The reason for this is articles that had nothing to do with Apple were being headlined with headlines that would draw an Apple crowd. Which is a bit amusing, as I mentioned above that they tend to slight devices made by various manufacturers for features that are missing but are "important in this day and age", yet for some reason when these same features are missing in, oh say, an iPhone it is praised and any there is no mention of said feature at all or a fault against Apple/the iPhone for lacking it. This does harken back to the their Engadget days. For those who remember they'll know what I'm referring to.
They have gotten better about it and are giving slightly fairer reviews and opinions, but still everything is skewered in Apple's favor and the headline thing lately, well... now it makes sense about that.
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Furthermore I thought having traffic being sent your way for free is something any website owner would welcome???
It's a bit like complaining about having someone place an ad for you on the Superbowl versus the index of the local paper.
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Furthermore I thought having traffic being sent your way for free is something any website owner would welcome???
It's a bit like complaining about having someone place an ad for you on the Superbowl versus the index of the local paper."
You're 2/3 right, but the other third is that the eyeballs for the great headline go there first, and only a certain percentage click through. So they help you get readers but they leech your ad dollars.
All that said, if you call it something confusing and misleading like "theft of SEO" nobody is going to take you seriously. Sort of like other recent willful misuses of the word "theft."
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But... if those who do click through would never have found you without the referring article, how are they "your" ad dollars? What if it's a page with a number of stories, and the one that interests the reader isn't yours - how are they "your" ad dollars? They get the ad dollars for the page they provide, then you get the ad dollars on your site for the traffic that comes through. Assuming that you'd have got the ad dollars if only they didn't go to the first site is where this dangerously slippery slope begins...
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It's supposed to be a simple way of saying that one site trusts this site, which helps them improve in rank, but it's also driven by the people, which is why the ranking can get so fickle.
According to Rand at SEOMOZ, it seems like Google is really pushing towards a citation method of improving rank. They apparently studied several sites and noticed they were ranking for keywords connected with their brand name on other websites.
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"The Verge:
The defining feature of a "real" arcade, however, is that there aren't really any left.
Read the whole story at The Verge"
All that is there now. Kinda sad to see this. I'm a huge fan of The Verge, been so since they first started the site and even before that (when the majority of the staff were still with Engadget). But I can't say this surprises me by and large. The way some members of The Verge staff see things is through very oddly tinted glasses. And that's in general.
I will say this, that was an amazing article they wrote though. Love the new layout they seem to be using with lengthier articles.
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'Official Complaints' on twitter. Guess they aren't up on things.
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We posted a paragraph from your 7,700 word story in order to encourage our readers to read it at The Verge. There were no SEO efforts made. Since The Verge feels the paragraph was too much of an excerpt, we’re reducing the length as a courtesy.
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SEARCH BY DATE!!!!!!
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Theft of SEO?
I guess if a professional editor says "theft" means "supplanting" then it does. But we'll have to update our style guides.
There is currently no definition of "theft" that makes his tweet make sense.
I understand what he means to say — it's a familiar problem — but if you want people to respond to your complaint, be honest about what actually happened.
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Also, is this egregious?
http://boingboing.net/2013/01/17/the-life-and-death-of-the-amer.html
The story appears below The Verge's direct link in my Google search so there was no "theft of SEO." Maybe Huffington's egregious error was being too big and too effective, not its repost.
Could also be that the way BoingBoing blocks off the quoted text hides it from spiders, which would be a nice thing for them to do if they did it.
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Re: Also, is this egregious?
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Then again...
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I'm only guessing, but i suspect the answer is no...
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Theft of SEO
Does this mean that if I use the phrase "death of the american arcade" on my own web page, I am stealing from The Verge?
I wonder how Topolsky is able to walk around with balls so huge.
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Re: Theft of SEO
Just count how many times the phrase is used in the comments section here.
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It is the link somewhere else that would bring me; not searching for it in google where I am not aware of it yet.
Still, some sites I will never go to or if I do by accident I will look elsewhere for the same topic once I know it exists. There's the source of Huffpo that didn't give the full topic and of BoingBoing and within an hour all sorts of places to find the same article without having to go to this Verge site.
Lots of times to get out of the "Hot News" restriction, many will rewrite the article without changing the basic facts, still supplying you with the info.
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Theft of reputation.
Since they don't know what 'theft' means anyway, they could sue for 'Theft of Reputation'... After all, stealing a reputation sounds like a bad bad thing. It sounds much worse than the charge of 'acting like an ignorant self-righteous douchebag', which nobody would take seriously as a crime.
That's why Mr Topolsky ranted on twitter about 'theft', because 'promotion of our site to the general public' doesn't have the desired connotation of being a bad bad thing.
I for one won't bother reading this allegedly fantastic article on Verge, because they NOW have a reputation for ignorant self-righteous douchebaggery, and I want nothing to do with them.
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Won't someone think of the poor "Likes" "+1" "Re-tweet" "Dig" counters!
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Sometimes I go looking for older posts of mine before I regged the name... do you know how many hits AC gets?
So I resort to using Google and I find my posts on these other sites but they alter some of the words... some of them are disturbing...
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Re: Pot calling the kettle black plus another matter
For you in particular, That Anonymous Coward. I read an earlier article of yours, here on TechDirt circa 2011
about a company's awful behavior toward a person who found a security vulnerability. I really wanted to talk to you, or someone, about that. Please?
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One solution
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