| LED Digest 2154: Re-design Penalties? + Net Neutrality |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. May 5, 2006 Issue no. 2154 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Net Neutrality "Providers could also block access to sites they do not like." --== Penalized for Site Re-designs? ==-- ~ Mary Lee "Anyone else been penalized by Google for re-design?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Google Rankings - Are They Fair? ==-- ~ Simon Grabowski "...a quick search with MSN shows that your competitor has hundreds of different links pointed to them." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Throwing Down the Gauntlet - Test Site ==-- ~ John Smart ~ John Barendrecht ~ Brad Waller ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, The piece below was sent to the LED by Rob Forker. It's a New York Times editorial called, "Keeping a Democratic Web." I'll let you read the juicy bits: ------------------------------- "'Net neutrality' is a concept that is still unfamiliar to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. Cable and telephone companies that provide Internet service are talking about creating a two-tiered Internet, in which Web sites that pay them large fees would get priority over everything else. Opponents of these plans are supporting Net-neutrality legislation, which would require all Web sites to be treated equally. Net neutrality recently suffered a setback in the House, but there is growing hope that the Senate will take up the cause. "One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like. "That would be a financial windfall for Internet service providers, but a disaster for users, who could find their Web browsing influenced by whichever sites paid their service provider the most money. There is a growing movement of Internet users who are pushing for legislation to make this kind of discrimination impossible. "The House Energy and Commerce Committee defeated a good Net-neutrality amendment last week. But the amendment got more votes than many people expected, suggesting that support for Net neutrality is beginning to take hold in Congress. In the Senate, Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, and Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, are drafting a strong Net-neutrality bill that would prohibit broadband providers from creating a two-tiered Internet. Senators who care about the Internet and Internet users should get behind it." ------------------------------- First of all, I find the idea of tiering Web site accessibility dependent upon financial stipends potentially unethical and highly complicated. Not to mention contrary to the foundations of the Internet. This type of legislation could impact millions of people who do business online. What are your thoughts? Have a great weekend, Adam -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mary Lee Subject: Penalized for a Site Re-design? For those that are interested in this I can tell you what happened to my site in the last 2 weeks in Google. Let's call it a warning. My site has been online for almost 4 years now and for the search term 'murder mystery games' I was always at 3-5. I have loads of content, articles, forum etc... related to this subject plus products for all ages, which is why I think I ranked so well. My competitors do not have content, just a few products. I decided to re-design my site. I created a very clean and fast loading design from CSS. No more tables, no more confusion when looking at the page. It is easy to read and navigate. I barely changed the wording, but now my main content is at the top of the source code, so it would be indexed first. It now WC3 validates in XHTML & CSS. For this painstaking work, Google dropped my site down to 13-25, depending on when you search. Sites that have been online only shortly with no useful content are ranking better than me! Talk about frustrating. Clean up your site and make it easier to navigate and Google penalizes you! Anyone else been penalized by Google for re-design? Mary Lee Dinner and a Murder Mystery Games http://www.dinnerandamurder.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Simon Grabowski Subject: Google Rankings - Are They Fair? > I am doing a research paper on "Google Rankings: Are They Fair?". > When I use Google "link: www.pointofsuccess.com" It shows > numerous incoming links from a website called pmq.com... - Robert Winter, LED 2151 Robert, Personally, I don't think that it is fair for you to disclose your competitor's URL and discuss their potential wrongdoings in a public discussion forum. If you believe your competitor has violated Google's TOS, you should use the correct venue and get in touch with Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html Other than that, I recommend that you use other tools for investigating inbound links than Google which is known to limit the number of links they display. For instance, a quick search with MSN shows that your competitor has hundreds of different links pointed to them: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=link%3Awww.pointofsuccess.com Simon Grabowski GetResponse: Email marketing and autoresponders http://www.getresponse.com/ ==== BILLBOARD =================================== <Moderator Comment> Like many LEDers, I'm completely behind John Smart's great idea for a test site. I think gathering empirical data will be useful, and doing it as a community is fantastic. And as much as I would love to be a part of it all, I simply don't have the time. I can still help, though: I'm happy to publish findings and updates, both on this list and the LED site. My feeling is that the LED is like a "homebase" or platform for the testing project. Just wanted to put this out there so there's confusion moving forward! :-) See John's post below. He's on it! Best of luck to the LED testers, -adam ------------------- From: John Smart Subject: Test site I like the charity idea a lot - we do hosting for charities to help out many charities, and I love that sort of thing. My only concern would be - if we get them 1st place ranking, it is going to be hard to tinker in a way that may cause them harm. If we ruin the ranking of a fictitious site, I can live with that, but if we over-tinkered and Google dropped the site altogether, I would feel awful. But, this is not my project - how about a vote? Okay, I don't want to remove this from the LED. I am of the opinion that this is most definitely an LED initiative. That said, I see some discussions here that could swamp the digest, with the exclusion of all else. That wouldn't be fair to all the good topics and posters. With that in mind, I have launched a message board. I propose keeping this on the message board, with me submitting updates to the Digest so Adam can keep everyone in the loop without boring you all to tears! Further I think some issues need to go to the vote, and there are votes on the site, which is harder to do in the digest. So to get messaging please visit: http://www.seo.internetdesign.com/phpBB2/ I look forward to watching this all develop! It really is terribly exciting! John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Test site I like the idea of a test site but agree that it should be a charity site. I think we should call it LED-charity.com or similar and have our esteemed list moderator pick the charity. Hopefully, Adam will choose a charity that has global impact (cancer?) and not political, religion or lifestyle (drinking / smoking). We'll run Google AdWords or similar to make money. We could all learn something and help people at the same time -- a win-win situation. Count me in. We're never all going to agree on everything. So let's appoint John Smart as head webmaster and the rest can be assistant webpersons, copywriters, SEO gurus, linkmasters, graphic artists or bottle washers. One dilemma may be a legal entity -- could we get the charity to take the check / money directly from Google, etc? Best regards, John Barendrecht Centralhome.com Company Inc. http://www.centralhome.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Test site I have a two domains available for testing as well. Both are virgin and have never been used: AffiliateAdvisor.info (affiliate program info? Glenn Sobel's .com version has been dormant since '04) myep.com (can be pretty generic as EP could be anything, only 26,200 results in Google) Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it." - Elaine Agather |
