Comments on: The Mahalo Paid Link Evidence Trail

By: Will.Spencer

Will.Spencer — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:23:49 +0000

Does Matt’s comment mean that Google is completely fine with cross-links between sites?

If you build up a large linking network, that really just means you’re selling links to yourself.

And if Google is OK with it, that’s a big opportunity for black hat fun.

By: T-Tom

T-Tom — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:11:21 +0000

Well, not “dealt with” in the removed/banned sense, but they seem to have been downgraded. Traffic seems to be down 30-40% in the past 2 mo, the reverse trend for the prior 12 months. Maybe it’s a downgrade or maybe it has something to do with Mahalo noindexing pages that are spam. Whatever the reason, it’s good to see that traffic cannot be captured so easily. Building a ton of crap pages targeting hot terms is an obvious seo play but it does not add any value to the Internet. Mahalo reminds me of Wikipedia, but with very little real value. The most I have gained from Mahalo is an occasional link to YouTube, but YouTube is the site adding the value to the web, not Mahalo.

By: Michael VanDeMar

Michael VanDeMar — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:44:28 +0000

@T-Tom – yeah, that doesn’t really look like anything that was “dealt with” to me.

By: T-Tom

T-Tom — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:47:02 +0000

Great post.

It looks like Google is finally dealing with this spammy site:
http://www.quantcast.com/mahalo.com

By: Paid Content: the New Paid Link | SEO Book.com

Paid Content: the New Paid Link | SEO Book.com — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:09:27 +0000

[...] are somewhat hard to scale because (outside of those who create a network of spam) it is time intensive to find the right sites, negotiate a price, and then ensure appropriate [...]

By: Ed Jarnok

Ed Jarnok — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:45:28 +0000

“Regardless, Google probably doesn’t want to see them go down for some reason. But yet some reason we don’t know… Odd..”

Actually, we do know the reason, and it’s sad that I have to hide behind a fake name in order to say it…

All you have to do is follow the money. Mahalo is backed by Sequoia. See, Google punishes websites with VC money from top-tier firms. They gave Scribd a spanking many months ago for their blackhat tactics. But Scribd isn’t backed by Sequoia. And that’s a very, very key fact.

Follow the money..and no I’m not talking about adsense, although Jason is some premium-level adsense publisher who has special permission to show more units on the page than a normal person is allowed to..but that’s part of the larger issue.

Google isn’t throwing a Sequoia investment down the drain.

By: daniel j deyette

daniel j deyette — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:51:01 +0000

I think the key point here is that whether intentional or not, malaho is re-selling link equity and of course scraping other people’s content for money. Regardless, Google probably doesn’t want to see them go down for some reason. But yet some reason we don’t know… Odd..

By: Michael VanDeMar

Michael VanDeMar — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:02:17 +0000

@Haluk – that’s wrong on a couple of levels, let’s not try and blur the issue. What Jason is doing is pretty cut and dried. AdSense is clearly marked as ads, is composed of Javascript links, and ultimately those links are blocked by robots.txt, so even if a bot processes and follows those links, they should hit a normal bot block. For example, the robots.txt on http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ (the domain that AdSense for content uses):

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /
Noindex: /

Jason and Mahalo, on the other hand, do none of these.

There is enough misunderstanding and confusion out there for Jason and Google to hide behind on these issues, let’s try and not introduce more.

By: Haluk

Haluk — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:22:14 +0000

Google’s main revenue channel is Adsense.
Adsense sells “text links” on google pages.
When another site sells “text links”, that site gets punished by Google.

By: SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 15, 2010

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 15, 2010 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:05:03 +0000

[...] The Mahalo Paid Link Evidence Trail, Smackdown! [...]