Comments on: Rand Fishkin & The Troll Defense

By: SEOmoz Decision Making Flowchart

SEOmoz Decision Making Flowchart — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:31:48 +0000

[...] pattern has been discussed before by myself and several others in the SEO community, but until today, I never realized it was actually a part of a written plan! I [...]

By: No, Just Lying About It Is NOT Effective Reputation Management | Smackdown!

No, Just Lying About It Is NOT Effective Reputation Management | Smackdown! — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:17:53 +0000

[...] words and obfuscating the issues would prove his point. It was extremely similar to the tactic that Rand Fishkin used the following year when confronted about his own words, with one very clear distinction… [...]

By: Michael VanDeMar

Michael VanDeMar — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:27:12 +0000

Nate, for one, you are replying to an almost 9 month old post. Yes, the ranking data has changed since then, and correct, at this time Aviva does not show sitelinks.

The bit you posted about sitelinks always being there for a company is “of course” just plain wrong, that never has been true. It does in fact indicate a certain amount of authority, ranking power, juice, whatever you want to call it, that simply is only there for a select number of websites.

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:16:54 +0000

Of COURSE if you type in a company name or website you will see the site links below it…that doesn’t mean it’s an authority site – that’s just how Google responds when you type in a specific known entity. BTW if you check again you’ll see that the site links for “aviva directory” are gone.

By: Rand Fishkin Chooses Between Putting Up and Shutting Up - Guess Which He Chose? | Smackdown!

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:53:11 +0000

[...] I refrained from being involved in the discussion with Rand, or even blogging about it, lest he use The Troll Defense as an exit strategy yet again. Finally, Yuri basically told him to put up or shut up. [...]

By: WBW (Worldwide Blog Wrestling) Presents… » Why SEOmoz Needs A “For Entertainment Purposes Only” Disclaimer

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:30:29 +0000

[...] get around to doing that, since Rand decided shortly thereafter to retreat completely behind his troll defense, and quit answering questions altogether (regardless of who asked him and despite what he claimed [...]

By: A Tribute to Sphinn † Hamlet Batista dot Com

A Tribute to Sphinn † Hamlet Batista dot Com — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:26:01 +0000

[...] his FeedBurner counter must be broken: it says he has only 2 readers! I came across his blog when he was ranting about Rand’s post involving Aviva’s directory. He covers some really interesting and controversial stuff. Check out his blog and subscribe to his [...]

By: Skitzzo

Skitzzo — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:42:02 +0000

Rand, one MAJOR question I have after reading your response here is this: If you believe the best way to determine whether Aviva passes value is to buy links and see if the links help, why in the world wouldn’t you have done so BEFORE blasting Aviva? Wouldn’t that have been the responsible thing to do?

The fact that you hadn’t before writing this piece is VERY surprising to me.

By: Dirsensei Web Directory Blog » Rand Fishkin A Howard Stern Wannabe

Dirsensei Web Directory Blog » Rand Fishkin A Howard Stern Wannabe — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:13:20 +0000

[...] Owners. His latest publications of lies, deceit, self promotion ala Howard Stern and published at Smackdown Blog of Michael Vandemar had me puking. This Circus Clown Rand Fishkin is so great at making up excuses [...]

By: randfish

randfish — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:36:33 +0000

Michael,
As you’ve asked me to over email, I’ll try to address your concerns here on your blog.

The series of events as you’ve painted them make it look like I promoted our directory list in premium content (which I did), then was negligent about responding to criticism on several forums and blogs (again, I admit to it – I’m overwhelmed with stuff at work and planning a wedding, was on vacation all last week and have tons of projects and a few clients as well with demands on my time).

Your other concern is that I glossed over the critiques of my methodologies – I’d say again that I still believe that the rankings I pointed out to you over email and those I discussed in the V7N thread and the SEOmoz blog are indications that Google has some issue with Aviva. You’re certainly free to disagree, and you’ve brought up many searches where they perform adequately.

I think the best way to determine whether Aviva passes value is to buy some links there, point them to some test sites in relatively non-competitive fields and see if the links can help to raise the rankings. If they can, then my arguments are baseless and your points are validated. Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t go this route to help prove me wrong – no evidence would be more damning.

In any case, I’ve done so tonight – bought a couple links to different pages and we’ll see what the results look like.

Hopefully I’ve addressed your concerns – let me know if there are other pieces you’d like to see me respond to.