The world is full of scams, and as domain values increase there is a need for a Fort Knox style facility for holding domains securely. Moniker continues to earn top praise as the registrar of choice. I see Moniker recommended every time there is a domain theft or a new scam (and there is a new threat today - see below). I can only hope the domain auction business provides adequate cash flow, because no company can provide the levels of security we need with the few bucks they get on domain registrations (update: Oversee.net now owns Moniker… cash flow not an issue?).

Today on NamePros there comes warning of more abuse of the public’s trust in PayPal, this time for domain sales. Someone is allegedly offering to buy domains and using a PayPal account, which is then charged back on the premise that the item never “shipped”. The way PayPal works with credit card companies apparently leaves the seller holding the (empty) bag, even though the buyer has control of the domain. Read this thread because they identify the aliases used by this person, the whois, the email domains, and even a photo for those on the ground in Romania ;-)

Of course escrow is the answer, and that’s where Moniker gets recommended highly again. Good to see them stepping up to the plate as domaining advances and the various schemes are put into play by, instead of sitting back and monetizing the status quo until something breaks (the way it seems most companies operate these days).

Domainers and Affiliate Marketers… what a combination! Domainers doing asset development like SEOs because SEOs know how to get tons of search referral traffic. But I often think that one of the reasons many domainers who don’t understand SEO still like SEOs is because SEOs know affiliate marketing (and monetization in general) and domainers want to monetize their traffic.

So it’s a no-brainer to say Domainers and SEOs should work together, but when did you last hear someone suggest Domainers and Affiliate Marketers should work together? You’re hearing it now, and February presents an unusual opportunity for just that. Both T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and Affiliate Summit are in Las Vegas with just a few days between them.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. (February 18-21 at the Venetian) is the premier domainer’s community conference. We tend to call all of these “expos” and “meetings” and “conventions” conferences but really, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is a true conference. Unlike conventions where everyone in an industry gathers around an expo or a collection of sessions, networking in-between sessions, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is one big networking session with conversation-and-thought provoking content tying the group together. You go to TRAFFIC for the people, and the gracious hosts and repeat participants help YOU get involved right from the initial “first timers” cocktail party on day 0. It’s all about domaining, but since domaining is also about SEO and marketing and online promotion and technology and TheFutureOfTheInternet, TRAFFIC is an exciting conference for anyone in the online space. For reference, domainers know that BigTimers like CreditCards.com get up to $175 per credit card application, via a direct deal with the credit card companies. Not avalable to everyone, but the upper limit for per-sale commissions. Let’s keep that in mind as we compare to other deals below.

Just a few days after TRAFFIC comes Affiliate Summit West at the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Affiliate Summit is the big event for affiliate marketers, those web entrepreneurs who build and promote web sites that sell other people’s stuff. Affiliate marketing was the dominant monetization method prior to contextual advertising, and remains the most lucrative avenue for easy-monetization even today. All SEOs know affiliate marketing, for that reason. A LinkShare affiliate program for credit card applications can pay $100 per sale… Not as much as the BigBoys can get working directly with American Express, but not a bad commission, and far better than any PayPerClick reward from Google.

I won’t be at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. this time but I’ll be at Affiliate Summit, and maybe Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara (overlaps perfectly one day with Affiliate Summit, so I’m not sure how that will work out for me yet). I suppose if you’re a domainer doing development and monetization, you’ve got a TriplePlay here with very little conflict : T.R.A.F.F.I.C. plus a few days off and then AffiliateSummit and a short hop to Santa Clara for SMX. I’ll note that the order is good as well… catch up on the domain space, meet the guys making millions hawking AsSeenOnTV-like products and earning $50 or $100 affiliate payouts per credit card application (compared to your $1.25 Google AdSense payout), and then hook up with Search Marketers to put it all to work on tons of search referral traffic that actually converts those $100 credit card apps, optimizing with targeted traffic for whatever affiliate programs you learned about by networking at AffiliateSummit.
Looks like the end of February is MakeMoneyOnline week in the west.

Executive Summary for Domainers: Google is not your friend. Product feeds are out; they have an obvious footprint detectable by Grandpa Google, offer little opportunity for differentiation, and don’t pay as well as affiliate programs. Super Affiliates can cut unqiue deals once they show the traffic they generate, getting them closer to those $175 commissions than anyone will publicly admit. That means domainers may be suited to become Super Affiliates. Search traffic is awesome, but needs to have a target, which is either PPC ads or affiliate links or direct links, so pick the best deal for you. If you go the affiliate route, your affiliate manager is your key to the palace and if you need one to get your started drop me a note and I’ll hook you up with a class act.

It’s never too early to be looking at SEO aspects of Magento, the new Open Source commerce application (shopping cart). Theyare still in beta but quite advanced, and search engine friendly issues have been addressed a few times in the Magento SEO forum, and in the “SEO group” and on the Magento site. There’s a video clip from November describing the rewrite system as very flexible, because in SEO, “every seo has his own opinion”.

Much of the SEO discussion is very basic, and there is pitifully low activity on real SEO. Someone on the China magneto forum posted a spider view back in November, before the latest SEO friendliness was incorporated. There is more SEO discussion in China than on the main site as well. However, the framework is quite capable and the meta tag management is as I would expect it to be for a modern, flexible PHP framework.

Maybe it’s time to dig in and flex the SEO friendliness and Magento’s “built in flexibility”?

I’d like to connect with anyone else looking into Magento and SEO, or anyone attempting effective deployment of Magento at this stage (non-production assumed) with respect to search marketing. The online demo site is not looking so good, but given the level of SEO discussion so far I didn’t expect it to be optimized. That said, this Chinese demo is not looking so good either, and they did have a bit more Magento SEO discussions.

I followed a link to RescueTime.com, a Web 2 ot Doh! application that keeps track of your time. You install a piece of spyware toolbar widget timer app, and RescueTime keeps an accounting of how long you are using a particular desktop application (like Word or Excel or Outlook) or web site (like Sphinn). I’m not sure I want to know how much time I spend on some web sites, but I do like the idea of capturing time (that is why I used Timeslips before I started to hate it).

This is what I clipped from the Privacy Policy assurance statement, which directs you to read the privacy policy:

“…the only thing we track is the names of the apps and sites you use and the times that you use them”

Um… is there anything else they could track? I mean, shy of taking screen shots of what I do or logging every keystroke I type (which reminds me, eBlaster  has been upgraded), they are recording a lot of personal activity data. What is that worth to you? A free time usage data logger?

It would take a lot more than a free time accounting widget for me to hand over tracking of every website I visit and when and for how long, every desktop application I use and when I use them, and perhaps most importantly how often, when, and how I use my computer and Internet connection. Using Skype? Vonage wants to know! Visiting Vonage.com via https? Skype wants you to know it’s cheaper! An active eBayer? Never use eBay?  Good to know! Downloading IRS forms? Spending time of PlentyOfFish? All good to know.

I supposed we’ve gotten used to our Federcal Communications Commission (FCC) failing to do much useful with the 300 million taxpayer dollars we give them every year. But now we have a new value consideration for American taxpayers: what is world wide embarassment worth? What is the value of the FCC propping American’s up as the laughing stock of the world, and hypocritcal to boot?

Our FCC just fined a television show $1.4 million dollars for showing a bare bottom (from the side) and a small portion of the side of a woman’s bare breast (from the side, across the room), nearly 5 years ago, before 10pm. No, I’m not kidding. Eerily Taliban-like, no? reports are everywhere… making the worldwide part of the embarassment a sure thing. You can read the details here and here and here.

Personally I cringe whenever I see any of the following these days:

1. an American criticizing a European nation, yes, that includes France
2. the value of my US dollars compared to the Euro, the Canadian dollar, the Chinese Yuan, the Jananese Yen…or almost any other modern currency
3. the prospects for the current crop of presidential candidates actually changing the current disaster we call our government
4. an American saying “stop bitching… we still have it better than other countries“. Yeah, that’s the spirit. Celebrate mediocity all the way until we are just a hair better off than the worst. What then, a “yea we’re not the worst” celebration?

For all those who say we don’t need to get involved because our voters and our government will work it all out eventually, I have to ask, at what price?

The way things are going, Google maps will soon be as reliable as Wikipedia.

A Google blog announced Google maps are now user-adjustable, and adjust we users will. For example, a resident of an apartment building in New York City decided the building address 510 East 20th Street would be better pointing directly to his apartment than the front door or the street outside, so he moved it 30 meters in, slightly left of center, along the back wall of the building. I suppose he has a view of the courtyard from his apartment window? Oh, and i suppose if you don’t like it, you can just change it back, eh?

I knew Google was not 100% trustworthy, but now it seems Google is obfuscating the source of that problem?

Live edits viewer is here.

Updated just minutes later: I hope you’re all having fun, as that NYC apartment pointer has already been moved again! So maybe it’s no longer a good example.. or maybe it’s now a better example? This is so confusing, just what maps are not supposed to be! Anyway, it took me three clicks to find that example the first time, so go ahead and look around the live-edits-viewer yourself  if you need more examples… I’m sure it won’t take you long to find them.

The “Google Sandbox” is a time delay imposed on new domains, preventing them from ranking in search results unless they exceed some set of criteria known only to Google. It was named by search marketers who have since debated its character as well as its existence. Many new domains show no signs of “sandboxing”, while publishers who have had to struggle to “break out of the sandbox” know that such traffic embargos are a serious business consideration. Now, Google is reportedly preparing a 5 day sandbox for newly-registered domains.

According to Jay Westerdal of Domain Roundtable, insider sources (unnamed) revealed Google is planning to impose a sandbox delay on the monetization of new domains. Domains less than 5 day sold will not be able to monetize with AdSense. Jay suggests that this will “kill” the practice of Domain Tasting, something many in the Internet industry have been wishing for, since there is really no upper limit to the scaling of domain tasting.

Domain “tasting” is the practice of registering domain names to test them for a few days, with an option to release them for a refund if you decide (for whatever reason) you don’t want to keep them. The “tasting period” is 5 days. This option is actually available to everyone, although it is not made available to everyone because many registrars choose not to offer it or simply don’t make it readily accessible. Tasting domains would be a reasonable strategy for many web publishers. Unfortunately however, it scales very well. With Google’s AdSense a large scale domain tasting effort can be very profitable. Jay reports that one active domain taster earned $3 million per month from AdSense on tasted (and never registered) domains.

By blocking AdSense revenues for domains less than 5 days post registration, Google would effectively eliminate the profitability of large-scale domain tasting. Tasting would still serve its primary purpose for domain registrants — they can still test traffic levels or re-think their commitment to a domain, and benefit from the refund option.

What is the impact on web publishers and SEOs? If other monetization platforms followed Google’s lead to effectively embargo domain tasting as a for-profit activity, large numbers of domains that are currently registered every day would remain available for registration. That increases the pool of names available to those actually needing domain names. In addition, if activity levels decreased, this would have an impact on ad inventory levels and Quality Scores (publisher payouts) across the remaining Google ad network.

I started this blog by calling online marketing a form of competitive webmastering. While what we do changes over time, the reason we do it is to compete with other web publishers for the attention of the audience. If they do something to help themselves out rank you, you will have to address that problem and vice versa.

Not everyone likes competition, which is fine, just as not everyone likes rain and not everyone likes growing pains, yet those things (like competition) are essential ingredients of life. Just because you don’t like them, you can’t safely ignore them. I wrote “Think Like A Dirty Bastard” to remind people that they need to assume a perspective of a competitor to “see” their weaknesses. Now that SEO has matured in this age of one search engine, we don’t need to imagine the Dirty Bastards anymore. They are hard at work attacking us, and we can see they are proud of it if we read Internet Marketing web sites comments like this one:

There are two kinds of link work: offensive and defensive. Offensive involves getting high quality links pointing to your target website. Defensive involves getting good links pointing to your competitors’ sites removed. Defensive work as I practive it involves emails or snail mail letters to webmasters suggesting removal of links or pointing out that the site they are linking to might not be what they think. Also, letters to executives at search engines. Not only defensive links work good and effective practice; it is obligatory for an SEO consultant who has his or her client’s welfare in mind. The point is not to have more or better links; it is to have more and better links than the competitors.

Apparently “Crimson Girl” speaks from the heart (i’ve added the bolding here.. to emphasize the key bits). She says she has the interests of her client in mind when she does whatever it takes to either advance her client’s site or damage her competitor’s ranking. I wonder if she chose the moniker “Crimson Girl” because crimson is the color of blood? Anyway, don’t you wonder if Crimson Girl is working for your competitors?

Once Google started encouraging webmasters to report other webmasters to Google if they appeared to violate the not-very-specific Google Guidelines, I made this parody SEO SECRET postcard showing a turtle SEO taking care of a competitor turtle SEO. That was summer of 2006. It’s much worse now. Even Crimson Girl loves the way Google has partnered up with the Dirty Bastards, providing ever more avenues for “outing” fellow comrades:

Now Google gives us an opportunity to report paid links. OF COURSE we will take advantage of this. It would be irresponisble not to. Incredibly, talk among Sphinn participants brands this activity under the prejorative term “ratting” like it is immoral. It is not only moral; it is required if you are keeping your client’s best interests in mind….If you don’t report competitors who use paid links you might as well turn in your SEO card and go do something else. Rand Fishkin points out sites using paid links on his blog (that’s fair game for blogging), and astonishingly, he is criticized for doing so!

Note again Crimson Girl’s conviction, and her moral basis for that conviction. Wow. You have to admire that, right?

I found it oddly ironic that Sphinn, the marketing community where this conversation took place, had “voted down” Crimson Girl’s comment so it is hidden from view in the comment thread. In my view, it is by far the most interesting (and informative) comment in that lengthy thread. Do online marketers wish it werent true? Do they attempt to vote it out of existence, voting being some manifestation of denial?

After one of my comments was “voted off the page” at Sphinn the other day, I got curious and started opening up every down-voted comment I encountered, including this one from Crimson Girl. I am convinced I can learn a whole helluva lot from the comments that Sphinn marketers don’t want me to see. I know… that’s not really news, but it deserves mention at least. I will vote her back up one of these days, when I am confident my voting her up won’t be considered encouragement of her Dirty Bastard behavior. Communities can be fickle and one does need to be a little mindful at times…

The domainer space is interesting and exciting for me because it is a rapidly changing market built on a disruptive concept, tightly linked to search marketing. It’s got style, including wild success stories and Big Courageous Egos, yet is actually quite simple in concept. In short, it’s beautiful. But like most things beautiful, it suffers from constant threats of destruction (that’s a video clip from Fight Club).

Recession Means Opportunity

A big recession is a gold mine for domainers. When money gets tight and people have to focus on their core jobs, they often decide to allow domains they are holding to drop, in order to save the reg fees. Of the millions of held domains out there, plenty would drop if the costs of maintaining them rose much higher than it is now. Inflation can cause that to happen, as can the tightening of budgets normally associated with a recession. So smart domainers have been building up cash reserves, getting ready to step in and buy whatever drops if the cash crunch gets serious enough.

Liquidity is a Problem

For many smaller domainers, though, liquidity was already an issue. I hear SEOs comment that “domainer’s are cheap” and “domainers are so used to paying $8 for something they won’t pay real money for consultants or contractors” but I know many domainers are already strapped for development cash, as domain parking pays very little and Google et al. actively “manages” the advertising profits shared with parked domains (very efficiently, I might add). How can a domain investor get some liquidity out of a domain portfolio, without selling domains into a downmarket, or even selling into an up market likely to go much higher?

Buying Shares in Domains

Enter domain stock markets like Fusu. Fusu hopes to provide domainers with cash for development, by creating opportunities for samll investments in domains much like the stockmarket enables large investments in industry via smaller, risk-managed investments in shares of the company. Via Fusu, you can buy shares in a domain (and the domain owner can sell shares of the domain for cash). It is a way to get some liquidity out of a domain asset, without losing control of the domain. I can’t say much good about the existing implementation of Fusu, but even that may demonstrate the sincere need for quality development resources in this domaining industry.

Partnering to Develop Domains

Another avenue to liquidity is partnering for development. There are VC-like development funds out there now, actively investing in domains by providing directed funds for team building, including web development, marketing and SEO. Some domainers have taken a direct route, offering partnerships for development in a Request For Proposal fashion. One press release I received recently for celebs.com reads:

The perfect partner for Celebs.com will likely have the resources to execute an entire business plan around developing this domain property. All aspects of the business will be the responsibility of the partner. Domains For Media plans to consider 4-5 partner proposals in the next 30 days and make a final decision by the end of February.

That’s right. All you need to bring to the table is everything but the domain name. Interesting approach, but it speaks to the purity of domaining.

Sweat Equity as Liquidity

Over the past 12 months I have spoken with a number of people active in this domain name liquidity event, but compared to SEO, this field moves very slowly. My experience with web development and search marketing tells me many of these players will lose their shirts to their vendors at least the first few times in the asset development game. I know more than a few CEOs of web development shops who are assuming control of web businesses right now because they build up controlling equity as contracted players on development projects over the past few years. Unless carefully managed, web development teams tend to do what they are contracted to do, and not what you really need done. The market is Darwinian in that respect, as I suppose all efficient markets are.

As an SEO consultant, I am interested in these opportunities. Given my experience, I am careful selecting projects, but my high standards are very practical and defensible, and not secret. I have no interest in being someone’s monkey, so yes, if there is real sweat to be invested there needs to be more to the business plan than one big exit event. If you have a real opportunity and need a high-integrity individual to help navigate to success, drop me a note.

The search industry struggles with issues of “fairness” too much. Every year several issues come up where search marketers cry “foul!”, Google frowns sternly while waving a crooked finger, and talking heads at the most expensive Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization in the world roll their eyes in suggestively “knowing” fashion (it’s a front, folks. They know less than we do!). Unfortunately, it seems none of these players has a clue. Oh, except the middle and upper levels of management of Google, of course. The ones with the really big money. I’m convinced they know what they are doing.

But the rest of us… so much wasted energy. Yes, those “great post, I sphunn it and bookmarked it” comments are a waste of glucose. So are the “Google is a meanie” posts. And the ones that say “rel=nofollow is unfair” and also the ones that suggest “every link is a paid link! Get over it!“. All wastes of energy. Even the ones from Google’s lower level millionaires are a disappointing waste, like “look at this guy’s buy-viagra-online-sites-directory-for-buying-viagra-online.com directory. See? Spammy directories are bad.” posts. They may be well-meaning, but they don’t address the real issues, they don’t propose any real solutions, and they don’t make for a better (or more profitable) world fo rthose who work hard. Quite simply, they don’t help. At best, they don’t contribute to enlightenment. At worst, they increase confusion, foster bitterness and hatred, and mislead those with poor reading comprehension skills (which for the 25-45 year old group, is a significant fraction of the whole). I know each of you seasoned marketers imagined links behind each of those statements, pointing to well-known posts demonstrative of my points, so I won’t bother to embed any distracting outbounds.

If “we” are to really address important issues of search marketing as a “search marketing community“, we really need to address this stuff close to home. Which is why I just poked Sphinn, arguably the largest search marketing community online, and fairly obviously the most progressive. Back when Sphinn was new, I liked it. But after several months I was disappointed in the low levels of participation I saw. Oh sure the BigNames had stopped by and placed their business cards on it, since obviously it was a great place to brand yourself amongst the rapidly growing lower levels of the search marketing work force, but aside from a few individuals, I didn’t see those BigNames giving much to Sphinn. Why not?

I hate that. It’s almost as if they stop by, place their face in a prominent spot, and either attempt to traffic-jack off to their own forum or passively wait for it to sink-or-swim, avoiding any commitment or responsibility for failure. So, I posted a bait piece designed to promote Sphinn among Sphinn’s participants. I timed it where I felt it was ripe for support from Danny (how could he disagree that Sphinn was Great?), and I hooked it just a tad towards binding Rand Fishkin into Sphinning it. I tried to draw in the critics as well as the Sphinn lovers, with a common cause potentially interesting to both camps. I pinged everyone on Lee’s the 100 Best Marketing Blogs list to remind them that I and others were actively promoting Sphinn involvement. I voted up every comment on my post, and told people I was voting up every comment on my posts as a way to encourage voting comments. And I incentivized the couldn’t-care-less crowd with a free link.

It worked, and we broke 100 Sphinns very quickly. Nice work, everyone. Today, there are dozens of posts in the >75 Sphinns bin, more “voting up” on comments than I remember seeing, and in my opinion even more support from everyone for Sphinn (including many of the BigNames).

But then we fought about paid links, argued with Google abut paid links, and debated paid links ad-nauseum everywhere, including Sphinn. We fought over rel=nofollow’s meaningfulness and fitness for purpose. We got emotional and we got nowhere. After a while everyone was tired of the debate, the impactful arguments became more recognized for their entertainment value than their impact on the industry, and everyone moved on with search marketing under the new rules (follow them, or ignore them). After a while, everyone pretty much settled into “I follow the no-paid-links guidelines” or “I don’t follow the no-paid-links guidelines“. And then, as suits them perfectly, Google acted in its self interest. Wham! The more visible in the “I don’t-agree” camp got nailed with penalties, and the story ends unhappily ever after for those guys. The rest responded as if slapped: better not let it go any farther.

Why did Google get its way so quickly? Because we, the search marketing industry, never truly addressed the core issue of paid links. We never formed a strong argument against Google’s viewpoint on paid links, and we let the issue die. Billions more for Google, no donuts for you. And Sphinn is more successful than ever. Huh?

It’s time to call Sphinn to task for its leadership role as an enabler in the industry. It’s really not my job to call out anyone; it’s everyone’s job. Allow me to explain.

Sphinn has voting, and Sphinn says you can “Sphinn” a post just once. The aggregate Sphinn count determines a posts’s importance to the community. Enough Sphinn’s and the post makes the front page (or eventually, the Greatest Hits page). There are a bunch of rules for fairness, and the rest is up to the community. Sounds just like linking, doesn’t it? Remember that paid links issue that devolved into a riches-for-Google-only game this past year?

As “votes” (or links) became valuable for driving a post (web page) to a larger audience (i.e. higher ranking), the market set a value upon them. Once so valued, they get traded (via Twitter, email, cliques, camps, and even religious affiliation). How is Sphinning different than Google’s links? How can anyone expect that this will not suffer the exact same ills as Google suffered with linking? More importantly, how can the search marketing industry fool itself into thinking Sphinn-like (or Digg-like) systems will be “fairer” or “better” than Google, without the equivalent of a rel=nofollow?

Yesterday I poked the Sphinn beast again, and prompted my readers to Sphinn that Greatest Hits post to raise it even higher on the Greatest Hits page. Go for 300 next, on the way to 1000 Sphinns. Why not? And yes, I offered a link back to everyone who helped me by Sphinning up that post. JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE has been telling their friends about their Sphinn submissions, and just like all those Social Media Experts telling their bands of cronies to Sphinn their posts. It works. It’s called business, and it is what puts disease-free organic food on your table, a dentist in your neighborhood, and a hybrid car in your garage next to the GTO. If it seems unfair, where will the line be drawn? Where does “asking for Sphinns” break Sphinn, the way it has been proposed that buying links will break Google? Or does it not risk breaking Sphinn, but rather makes it a little harder to be Sphinn.com or be profitable as Sphinn.com? I don’t know, but I think we need to find out.

But Sphinn thinks otherwise. In response to my new request to Sphinn up my post, EvilGreenMonkey told me this in the comments of my blog:

Sorry to be a party-pooper, but we request Sphinn members not to ask for Sphinns through means other than adding a Sphinn button to their site. Although your original post was tolerated, Sphinn is evolving and we don’t want to head in the direction of people paying, bartering or incentivising for Sphinns. I’ll shortly be updating the member guidelines regarding this to make the matter clearer, although in the mean time please consider that we may remove your 200 Sphinn post if you continue to ask people to Sphinn you.

So I replied with this, before I set out to write this here article you’re reading now:

Wow. Really? I didn’t know, and I guess I assumed the community would make such decisions. Should we expect a new rel tag for this sometime soon? Perhaps a rel=”nofollow” requirement for all Sphinns tainted by favors or “paying, bartering or incentivising”? Or perhaps you intend to penalize those who Sphinn my post? Or perhaps, you’ll just demote the post to the 30th position on the page, below the fold. Not so easy given the visible “Sphinn Count” up there, or maybe that’s not an actual Sphinn count, but a special Sphinn count just for public display? Hmm…

Just for the contextual record, in my original post I made sure to ask people to be mindful of harming Sphinn, to act rightfully, and that I don’t sell links but I do link to my friends and supporters.

Google’s approach to the development of a free market around links was to block it forcefully. In capitalist society, we have traditionally called these whirling dervishes that pop up around our successful and highly profitable industries “cottage industries“, and we considered blocking cottage industries to be evil. The right way to manage a cottage industry is to befriend it, to exercise some of the granted authority (and earned market might) the market has provided in order to penetrate the cottage industry and influence it. Encourage standards and practices that favor growth, more jobs, more wealth, and more dentists in the neighborhood - even the poorer neighborhoods.

The auto industry doesn’t actually make car parts any more - they are all made by members of the cottage industry that arose around the automobile industry. Those car parts makers had to sell their parts to someone, so a symbiotic relationship exists which is good for everyone involved. Why didn’t Google do something like that? Who’s asking that question? Where is it being smartly debated?

The same reason EvilGreenMonkey replied to me with “no, that’s not allowed, stop that, or we’ll ban you” (my paraphrasing). It’s to much work. It requires someone to bother to think. EvilGrenMonkey may be a volunteer for all I know, but does she represent Sphinn’s community or enjoy a right to exercise the Sphinn communities vote?

Seriously, folks. Hypocrisy begins at home. Before whining about Google, address the problem intelligently. I am going to make a heretical suggestion to all of you search marketers and search-traffic-hungry web publishers: we know more about the market for search than Google does. WE should solve the paid links problem. WE should tell Google how to handle it. WE should make the rules, in discussion with Google. And we should START AT HOME, with Sphinn,because it’s models the same problem, on a smaller, potentially more controlled scale. If we don’t take this up (and other issues like it), we have no hope of owning the search marketing industry. That’s all I have to say : Sphinn is YOURS, and I suggest you put it to good use.

Update: Please don’t be diswayed by those who will quickly label this a rant or suggest it is sour grapes or an attack hook to get attention.  That’s a normal immediate defense to criticism. Keep the focus on the issue, which is that the problem of paid/bartered/urged/prompted links or Sphinns will not go away, and should probably be managed for the benefit of everyone delivering value to the system. I personally think that should be debated by search marketers, not search engines, and I thought Sphinn was the community poised to house that conversation intelligently.