More from Lars Lofgren
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of pages in Google. The SEO community refers to this type of thing as parasite SEO. Google has gone so far as to publish an official policy (documented here) on how this isn’t allowed: Site reputation abuse (parasite SEO) is rampant today. I […] The post The Stupidity of Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy appeared first on Lars Lofgren.
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch of SEO content to make a bunch of money. Content often gets published in a subfolder or subdomain or the website. The goal is to leverage the domain’s trust with Google to get rankings and traffic easily. With the right agreement, you can make […] The post The Billion-Dollar World of Parasite SEO: How to Cash In appeared first on Lars Lofgren.
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had agreements with CNN and USA Today? And that Forbes Marketplace was stuffing those sites full of affiliate content just like it is with Forbes? And what if Forbes Marketplace went to extreme efforts to hide everything? Would this be considered parasite SEO? I believe […] The post CNN and USA Today Have Fake Websites, I Believe Forbes Marketplace Runs Them appeared first on Lars Lofgren.
Are you sick of Forbes appearing in search results? For topics that Forbes doesn’t have any expertise in? Here’s the organic rankings for “best pet insurance”: Forbes ranks #2. Not sure a business website knows how pet insurance actually works. But okay. They also have the #1 ranking for best cbd gummies: Because it’s a marijuana category, PPC ads don’t […] The post Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host appeared first on Lars Lofgren.
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate spam. It’s reddit marketing gone awry. The post blew up and got a decent amount of attention. Then I got a front row seat to how deep of a spam filled porta-potty Reddit has become. The State of the Thread When I Posted Here’s […] The post What Happened After I Outed a Reddit Mod for Affiliate Spam appeared first on Lars Lofgren.
More in technology
Today, Alec Watson posted a video titled “Algorithms are breaking how we think” on his YouTube channel, Technology Connections. The whole thing is excellent and very well argued. The main thrust is: people seem increasingly less mindful about the stuff they engage with. Watson argues that this is bad, and I agree. A little while ago I watched a video by Hank Green called “$4.5M to Spray Alcoholic Rats with Bobcat Urine”. Green has been banging this drum for a while. He hits some of the same notes as Watson, but from a different angle. This last month has been a lot, and I’ve withdrawn from news and social media quite a bit because of it. Part of this is because I’ve been very busy with work, but it’s also because I’ve felt overwhelmed. There are now a lot of bad-faith actors in positions of power. Part of their game plan is to spray a mass of obviously false, intellectually shallow, enraging nonsense into the world as quickly as possible. At a certain point the bullshit seeps in if you’re soaking in it. The ability to control over what you see next is powerful. I think it would be great if more people started being a bit more choosy about who they give that control to.
A quick look at the physics of conductors, insulators, and electric charges.
Waymo’s factory, a map of US land values, ships in the Arctic Circle, battery industry trends, and more.
What `git config` settings should be defaults by now? Here are some settings that even the core developers change.