About 30 minutes prior to this post, I posted "An Entrecard Holiday DYSFUNCTIONAL Link Love That Could Potentially Hurt You"

At the moment of that posting, I took it pretty seriously but I only had Gorilla Sushi's blog in mind.

About 3 seconds ago, I ran into another ENTRECARDERS blog who did the EXACT SAME THING and gave credit to Gorilla Sushi for it. So this is spreading...

And it's going to negatively affect the most gullible, naive and new amongst us because there's so many darn land mines online that they've never heard of, and one of them is called,

LINK FARMS LINK FARMS LINK FARMS

I explain EVERYTHING here: http://controversialmarketing.blogspot.com/2007/12/entrecard-holiday-d..

And the only reason I am posting this again so soon is because I just saw that it had spread and Graham and Phirate should do something to stop this IMMEDIATELY before it gets out of control.

Think about it... imagine how its going to look to the search engines. Think about what they might do. Think about how all of this good, steady, strong community and traffic building can go right down the drain for some, if not many, people because of this.

Did they even get permission to cheaply copy that page in its entirety? http://controversialmarketing.blogspot.com/2007/12/entrecard-holiday-d..

Graham, Phirate... I think you should directly notify all users to not engage in that. The long-term ramifications, while not distinctly discernible, will not be good.

Sam

Guess I should be happy my entrecard wasn't in the mosaic... How come I don't feel happy?

To take your question seriously, I'd guess its because you don't get much traffic right now so being involved in any kind of drama or attention getting fiasco is more preferable to you than none.

Actually, I was just trying to diffuse the tension a little.

I think perhaps a calmer course of action would have been to ask Gorilla to reconsider his blog post because of the link farm ramifications, rather than shouting it out to everyone. When best intentions are used (which I think Gorilla had), there's no reason to get 'controversial' on him.

I agree with fantasy baseball. You are quick to attack and patronize. If you drop the "everyone's an idiot" attitude and try to have them help you solve the problem, we'd be more inclined to help.

Where you went wrong with the last thread, was giving the summary, then linking me to the blogpost which I found to be a useless exaggeration on your summary. This is an insult to my intelligence. By attacking me after I gave a skeptical comment, you let your emotions get the best of you.

If you were to phrase it in such a way, such as, "hey guys, this is a serious problem, you should blog about it like I did to help spread the word and put an end to this quickly!" I would have been more helpful as less cynical.

I don't think it was best intentions. I think it was a cheap ruse to get backlinks, including benefits like technorati ranking.

I appreciate what you're getting at but I've seen enough of this stuff from bloggers to know that when you politely explain to them the negative potential of their action, they try to justify it.

And since this is an ENTRECARD problem and not a "gorilla sushi" problem, the best place to bring it up is HERE - in the COMMUNITY. And hopefully, Graham or Phirate will review the situation and be able to guide the community on whether or not COPYING AND PASTING the ALL CARDS page to one's blog is a "great idea!" or a potential "red flag" machine for search engines who despise link farms.

Sam

@doknowevil (screamface) -

"I agree with fantasy baseball. You are quick to attack and patronize. If you drop the "everyone's an idiot" attitude and try to have them help you solve the problem, we'd be more inclined to help."

Look who's talking about "exaggerating" - I never said everyone's an idiot and nor is it implied. I generally confer idiot status on a case by case basis and you're rapidly winning me over for an honorable mention.

However you need to slice the pie in order to make you feel better, what you're witnessing in this big "link love" LINK SPAM LINK FARM fest is how someone who wanted a lot of publicity for his site, copied the All Cards page to his own blog. And now its spreading and now its infecting people.

If I were you, I'd be a little more concerned about THAT than the attitude of a blogger WHOSE BLOG TITLE YOU CLEARLY NEED TO GO RE-READ.

It is certainly possible that copying the grid over and over again across the web could result in the sites that have made copies getting identified as link farms, but to be honest, I suspect it's not all that likely.

The fact is that google et al deal with these things on a statistical level that make a thousand links in one article a mere blip in the system. It's unlikely to do anything to anyones rank anywhere.

At worst, those sites running a copy of the grid are going to find their PR or something dropped a bit, but unless their site consists of nothing but the grid, chances are good that any reasonable blogger has a thousand links on their blog over the past few months anyway.

To be honest I believe attempts like this to manipulate rankings are much more likely to simply fail to work - any of the places where you really care about your rank have at least a small team dedicated to making sure stuff like this doesn't affect the viability of their ranking system, and the grid is as trivial an example as you could imagine, simple to filter out.

I created the grid purely for fun, to give myself and others an idea of what we've achieved, and who we are, after a month or two of operation.

I don't encourage people to duplicate the grid for a much more practical reason: it'll get out of date fast :) If you really do want to have it on your site for some reason, go ahead, but add the nofollow directive to the links (find and replace should do it easily) and make everyones life, including the search engine ranking teams, easier.

"... and when Entrecard was a month old, the anti-Sam was born... and the heavens wept and cheered at the same time for the entertainment these forum-rivals will soon spread to every soul that joined Entrecard...."

• excerpt from Evil Woobie's Entrecard journal post entitled... "In the beginning, there was nothing, no blog traffic not even light..."

Lighten up, people!

The nofollow directive is on the grid links on my blog where I use it as an example but we don't agree on this matter. We're not talking about 1000s of links across a few months, but rather a thousand links popping up on blogs OVERNIGHT. I realize the engines might not spider every site, every night, but you said it yourself,

"but add the nofollow directive to the links (find and replace should do it easily) and make everyones life, including the search engine ranking teams, easier."

And what if they don't. And what if the search engine teams lives are made more difficult. And who's to say what they will do?

I think it's a bit funny that you would think Google, or any search team, wouldn't find it awfull strange to see 100s of blogs with single articles that do nothing but give 1000 links out to all the same sites over and over and over again.

Nope, no problem there! LOL!

Sam

@Woobie - "your point had substance, until you decided to promote your blog." - do know evil

The worst that could happen is Google slaps every site involved (in the grid or not) with pagerank SERP or penalties. But then again many people aren't as inclined to letting the Big G control them.

not to mention everyone (with a brain) has very efficient starting page to chain drop from...

@java - exactly, but most importantly is that people should, at least, be made aware of this stuff; otherwise, they run around praising someone who is putting them in the crosshairs of a PR or SERP penalty.

I even wrote that some people might not care about Google rankings but some do and people have the right to know and should have the right to opt out of the LINK SPAM LINK FARM.

Take it from a PR5 (Sammy's only a 4) who participated in the 2K Bloggers project, this will only garner you a handful of links. Most people will either not have the know-how or the desire to drop 1300 links/pictures. Anyone who's seen my page has witnessed the mind-numbing load times and would be more than reluctant to stress their own blog out with a post like that ESPECIALLY if they don't truncate content on their front page.

Sam is a marketer and apparently uses tactics such as preying on the fear of others and more annoyingly regularly leaving links back from his forum posts to his own blog.

I won't sink to the level of slander (as Sam did in calling me "cheap, lazy and potentially harmful") but I will say that everyone has the right to do their own research, to make their own decisions and to express their own first amendment rights.

Sam has included the very same list of 1300 links on his site with the exception of using the "nofollow" tag which is ignored by Yahoo! and Ask.com and IS followed by Google but does not get indexed, unless it was in Google's index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page).

Anyone seriously considering Sam as a useful source of knowledge should consider this comment he left at badevan.com...

"A serious, serious disaster looming on the horizon. You unwittingly are engaging in reckless behavior. It might feel good at first, but it will catch up with everyone eventually and any parallels drawn to the gay lifestyle are purely coincidental."

Not that it matters because everyone seems to already have their opinion about you. But just to clarify...

"Look who's talking about "exaggerating" - I never said everyone's an idiot and nor is it implied."

Yeah... you can say that now that your other thread is locked. "nimrods-of-the-net" ring a bell?

You're not even worth arguing with.

Phirate and Gorilla, thanks for shedding some light on this situation.

Wow. Some of you worry about Google too much.

http://lookingforscoop.com/2007/12/26/fuck-a-google/

(And yes, it's a link to my own post. Not like I market my site normally anyway. Not trying to market it now. Just trying to provide some perspective.)

Oh, and save the doom preaching for the street corner. Sheesh.

Well Sam, since you love controversy, you'll understand why starting it can boost your hits thus making you more profitable in the end.

My take on all of this is that you are in your own words, using your "10 Simple Ways to Squeeze the Most Out of Entrecard for Your Greater Advantage"

GorillaSushi is just your scapegoat in this instance. What he did was nothing more than what thousands of other bloggers do every day.

Seems like you're the one abusing the system. Since I myself am a professional in Internet Marketing, I can tell you that your tactics are very transparent to many but no so much to others.

Especially since you duplicated the portion of GS's post where he actually shares some link love. It's kind of hard to tell others they shouldn't do what you're doing as well.

There's a total of 1 blog on EntreCard which I purposely don't click on when I come across - either dropping or reading on the forums.

Sam - you remind me of a used car salesman trying to deflect the buyer's/reader's attention from the fact that your product is of low quality with no real value.

I have to agree with MentalRefugee that you're simply using GS as a scapegoat in another one of your "controversial" marketing techniques trying to squeeze EntreCard for your greater advantage.

What did you write about before EntreCard? I guess I could go look in your archives, but to be honest I never make it past the first few lines of your blog as it reminds me of a poorly written sales letter.

I think my EntreCard experience would be so much better if they had some sort of 'ignore' feature.

@gorilla sushi oh yeah.. my net died while TRYING to load the page. >_<

Well its glad to see I'm not alone. I was the one who was quoted on Sam's post about how I thought it was a good idea and could improve technorati rank. I took a similar tongue lashing in a private post. I started to reply, but then thought I would not waste my time. Well since this is out I might as well take a few minutes and respond so everyone can see. I assumed the tongue lashing was just as a result that what Sushi created was going to cancel out his own Viral linking campaign he announced the day before and at his own admission spammed several Entrecard users about.

Of course I may be right since my rank jumped around 40K since yesterday. May be related in part to the additional links or may just be a fluke.

I saw Sushi's post as nothing but positive. Google is not going to penalize any one for a single post. Well they might is that was the only content you had. Worse comes to shove they throw the one page out of the index. Big deal.

Maybe before we start talking about how Google will dump on link farms perhaps we should look around the web at some of the sites around DMOZ is nothing more than a link farm. Yahoo Directory is nothing more than a link farm. Digg is nothing more than a link farm. On a basic level this can be said of every social site out there. They seem to do Okay with Google.

I look at this on a risk reward basis. Perhaps as Sam pointed out there is a slight risk that Google or Technorati may care about someone posting the grid. I doubt if it was done in moderation on each site then they would not even notice.

But what would the reward be. If only half the people who had a link on the grid posted this then it would raise the authority and rank of every blog in the grid. Technorati only counts recent links so the benefit would not be all encompassing, but it would raise the awareness of the blogs in the short term. This would mean more traffic for all the blogs and give everyone a chance to raise their subscriber count. Sounds like a community building project to me. And I don't see a lot of risk here for people who wish to participate.

Sushi, perhaps you could zip up the code to create the grid with the smaller thumbnails and offer them up for download to those people who may not have the HTML skills to recreate it. Would help the cause a lot. :-)

Afterall Sam, maybe in 2-3 years I'll catch up and learn something about the web as you pointed out in your PM to me.

Bruce

I had been feeling a little guilty about ignoring Sams PM's asking me to participate in his linking projects.

Now I feel a lot better about ignoring his requests.

@jdonuts, Yeh, I was a little shocked by the response I received too by just saying I thought Jason had a good idea. By the way I just re-posted the Grid. Of course only after removing Sam's link to his blog. :-)

Feel free to snatch the HTML from the post if you desire.

Already done so mate, already done!

http://misdolinklove.blogspot.com/2007/12/entrecard-wall.htm..

All of the fuss is for naught, Google no follows images all by itself. Read the following article; http://www.adesblog.com/2007/12/07/google-detects-image-ads-and-nofoll..

Wow Sam, what is going on? The Gorilla is good people. Ohhh I get it, controversial right?

Oh please Sam, enough with the doomsday attitude already. I much prefer the link wall post than thinly disguised attempts to garner linkbacks through the use of memes.

This from a guy that calls me "stingy" on my blog for choosing not participate in HIS MEME! Since many people have already stated the obvious reasons why you are a complete douchebag, I will refrain from doing so now.

Get a clue dude.

-Caveman

I think the whole thing is silly, but I will comment just the same.

RE: Gorilla Sushi's Link Love post I've watched this blog for the last couple months and have swapped links with Jason since before I knew about Entrecard. I doubt he had any malicious intent or would knowingly do anything that could harm others with only his own gain in mind.

RE: SEO Benefits and Drawbacks to the method I won't pretend to be the world's foremost authority on the topic, but I've done pretty good with my own blog and I just don't see Google nailing everyone involved with a penalty. And a good point was made. If they were going to, wouldn't they have nailed everyone who was involved in the 2,000 blogger campaign? Technorati has a greater probability of dropping the hammer on people.

RE: How this got where it is I think it's safe to say, without bias, that Sam went about this the wrong way for anyone not seeking backlash. I've done it, and I've admitted to it, too, and I think that's what compounds it. Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time reading through all the comments here and on the involved blogs, not to mention the post Sam mad to start it all which was daunting just to think about reading. I did this because I wanted to be informed before responding. What I've discovered is that Sam likes controversy (self-proclaimed, even) and the post he made reeks of attention-bait.

Conclusions: I think it's safe to say that any successful blogger looks for opportunities and angles to exploit. You have to if you want to get anywhere. At the end of the day, though, you have to ask yourself if your post was more for you or for your readers. I think that Jason's Link Love post was probably about 50/50 and Sam's post about the Link Love post was about 80/20 (leaning to Sam, not his readers). I'm not one to take sides much, but I do know when my opinion about something of this nature leans heavily in one direction. I feel like an apology is due not only to Gorilla Sushi, but also to everyone else that got dragged in along the way.

As an additional observation, I think it should be noted that whatever side of the fence you're standing on, the fact remains that when a community like Entrecard grows to the size it has, situations like this will happen, so I hope that everyone remembers it and tries to learn and grow from it in any way possible to better prepare ourselves for the next one.

No offense, but the original poster seems a bit of an over dramatic twit...

A couple posts with loadsa links... sheesh!

I thought it was a pretty decent idea ;)

Alright, this is GOOD.

Conversations... dialogues... even when they get a little heated are, generally, really good. Not only for the participants but also for the silent passer-by who is genuinely curious as to who or what is really right - since it's possible, and likely, that everyone participating would have SOME segment of the public that, tentatively agrees with them.

The fact that Dennis Kucinic, who takes his orders from UFOs, has followers, is proof. ;-)

I hope, despite the fact that a mere handful of people are lightly annoyed, the powers-that-be won't intrude as long as this remains fairly civil and contained in one thread which passers-by can, as mature adults, simply opt to bypass.

A lot can be learned from this and there is absolutely no chance of Entrecard being harmed from it, at least not as likely as it would from having their All Cards page plastered across the internet in a big, massive viral link spam campaign.

For those who enjoy the value of a good, intelligent, back-and-forth by "the capable", this would be an excellent time to grab your favorite popcorn.

@Gorilla - First, Pagerank is different than search engine rankings and most people who understand it, generally discount it so wielding it about like it's a huge deal is, at best, impressive to people who don't understand it.

Secondly, describing yourself as "Gorilla Sushi is a band of eclectic bloggers writing on every imaginable subject.", you darn well BETTER have a PR5 and should be more concerned with why you don't have a PR6 rather than with my having a PR4.

Proper analysis would indicate that your blog appeals to an audience composed of people who have plenty of time to "spend" while my blog appeals to a much smaller audience who are mainly concerned with a) not wanting to get blindsided by shoddy marketing tactics; b) want to hear BOTH sides of an issue and c) appreciate bluntness.

But based on your current copy/paste viral link farm campaign, and some of the GS posts, "If I were to pick one cartoon that I would like to see the skeleton of it would have to be Homestar Runner. Which cartoon would you like to see dissected?", your apples-to-oranges comparison doesn't surprise me.

As for assuming people wouldn't want to "stress out" their own blog with "mind-numbing load times", you overestimate the blogosphere. People are already copying you. If a cheap, lazy copy/paste link farm got you some backlinks, why wouldn't someone else try it? So, your argument is valid, but YOUR doing it negates your argument - why would only YOU find it worthwhile? Why would YOU "stress out" your blog with "mind-numbing load times"...regardless of whether your front page truncated content? If you did it, and those unaware of the perils of link farms liked it, they could very well do it, too. So please..

"Sam is a marketer and apparently uses tactics such as preying on the fear of others and more annoyingly regularly leaving links back from his forum posts to his own blog."

Interesting characterization but highlights all the more why people who care about their blog standings should be wary of you. Kumbaya to all those who just blog because they have a lot of free time to kill and find blogging therapeutic, but many Entrecarders are hoping to build businesses, or becoming more affluent "probloggers" and, if they're relatively new, they might not realize that 100s of backlinks on relatively word-free articles, popping up overnight on dozens, perhaps 100s, of blogs, all pointing to the same 900-1000 blogs could represent a bit of a thorn in the side of their ambitions at some point down the road. And I have brought some light to that regardless of how unpopular it might be amongst a very tiny group of people.

Also, I link to my blog only where I deem a fuller explanation regarding an Entrecard topic is required. It allows me to retain control over the comments so that a full dialogue can be had by all parties - I do not delete relevant comments and am not worried about public opinion so I trust my comment section where I will allow you, and anyone else, their full response under almost all conditions.

"I won't sink to the level of slander (as Sam did in calling me "cheap, lazy and potentially harmful") but I will say that everyone has the right to do their own research, to make their own decisions and to express their own first amendment rights."

You not only sink to that level, but below it when you slander me by saying that I called YOU "cheap, lazy and potentially harmful". I had referred only to your copying of the Entrecards All Cards page and not to you. If I have, unwittingly, directly referred to YOU as cheap and lazy then I will gladly stand corrected. Even in a reply on my blog, I state clearly that I have nothing against you and wish you no ill will but I did characterize your move was a bonehead move which doesn't make you a full time bonehead.

"Sam has included the very same list of 1300 links on his site with the exception of using the "nofollow" tag which is ignored by Yahoo! and Ask.com and IS followed by Google but does not get indexed, unless it was in Google's index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page)."

Last I checked, Google still indexes sites that are linked to even with "nofollow", they just don't get any "weight" from the link. And if you even read the first paragraph of the article carefully, you'd see exactly why I also included the All Cards page. It was the QUICKEST way to reach all those who would not only be potentially affected but ALSO those who would be checking backlinks and, potentially, wanting to do the same as you. I even wrote, very clearly, that the pics and links would be removed shortly. Interesting you should purposely omit that.

"Anyone seriously considering Sam as a useful source of knowledge should consider this comment he left at badevan.com...

"(quote)A serious, serious disaster looming on the horizon. You unwittingly are engaging in reckless behavior. It might feel good at first, but it will catch up with everyone eventually and any parallels drawn to the gay lifestyle are purely coincidental.(unquote)"

Oh dear, dear... we do need to lighten up. Victim mentality has been very useful to certain groups for the past 30 or 40 years but it's starting to be seen for what it is and getting old. Owing to the sensitivity of various groups, there's nothing wrong with putting a little tongue-in-cheek disclaimer while bemoaning the 2nd example of a potentially damaging viral link spam campaign looming on the horizon.

And that is my rebuttal to GorillaSushi, a kingpin blogger with a PR5. Sorry, the word "rebuttal" contained the word "butt" - hope I didn't offend you.

Sam

@LFS - Regarding "fuck a google" and "who cares about Google"... yours is a prime example of people who jump into a thread without reading what the whole thing is really about. In my original post, I not only never said that people should pay homage to Google but instead said that people were UNWITTINGLY praising what amounts to a cheap, lazy copyign of the All Cards page which one has every logical reason to believe, could possibly be perceived as a viral link spam campaign - which is already spreading.

If you think it is about worrying about Google's opinion of you then you are mistaken. If you realize that it is about how people can, unwittingly, get caught up in something that potentially negates their efforts to succeed and be noticed, then you're in the right conversation - the one that I began anyways.

I'd link to an article title, "Get Your Vaseline Out Folks, Google Is At It Again" or "Wikipedia: Google's Anna Nicole Smith" to show you, and others, where I have written about the darker side of Google but I'd just be accused of promoting my blog.

@mentalrefugee - I would gladly entertain your accusations if you could be more specific. I know it's hard to believe that I really don't wish to blatantly insult but it's hard for me to not be blunt when I say that you're not only mistaken but your argument is not very well formulated. I don't expect an academic level dissertation but all you've done is referred to yourself as a marketer and given your opinion.

In short, you've totally missed the point of the original article which is how a cheap, lazy, unattributed copy of the All Cards page can easily spread and catch all kinds of people in a viral link spam campaign for which they never signed up.

If you want to continue spinning THAT into some "clever" attempt to victimize someone for backlinks, then you would be doing a great disservice to anyone who took the time to read you.

@How2Blogger - You said, "Sam - you remind me of a used car salesman trying to deflect the buyer's/reader's attention from the fact that your product is of low quality with no real value."

Could you be more specific? That's really vague and a LOT of people seem to disagree with you. Mine is a very difficult niche to successfully navigate and I'm pretty sure I'm doing alright despite your characterization. But I will entertain some specifics if you can come up with any.

You also said,

"I think my EntreCard experience would be so much better if they had some sort of 'ignore' feature."

I think your life experience, in general, would be so much better if you could just learn to control your emotions.

@Bruce - "Well its glad to see I'm not alone."

You are alone. No one is going to come over your house and talk with you about this. You just grew a few more hairs on your chest once you saw the opportunity to play "pile on."

What you omitted, not surprisingly, is that I did not mention your name. I explicitly stated at the outset of the article that I do not like to name people unless they are big marketers or A-list bloggers who influence many people. I further stated that I was reluctantly making an exception in Gorilla's case because of the potential for so many people to be infected so quickly.

If you want to characterize our correspondence as tongue lashing, then you might want to think twice about blogging. While you are entitled to maintain your blogging space as you wish, generally you are exposed to "life outside the bubble" and, as such, you will find people who not only disagree with you but are also of colder and hotter temperaments.

And you know... if you can't stand the heat... it's better to get out of the kitchen rather than waiting for an opportunity to play "pile on."

"I assumed the tongue lashing was just as a result that what Sushi created was going to cancel out his own Viral linking campaign he announced the day before and at his own admission spammed several Entrecard users about."

Cancel out? Is this more of that analysis I highlighted as "poor" in the original article? Think about it. I've already demonstrated that I can come up with new, fun, invigorating ideas to benefit the community. It would make no sense to get upset at something cancelling ONE of my efforts when a) it didn't, because the people in my "Love They Entrecard Neighbors" were genuinely grateful and b) Gorilla's article was nothing more than a lazy copy/paste of the Entrecard's All Cards Page.

I'd call it what it REALLY is but I'm keeping this civil. Are you REALLY saying that I would be jealous of someone who copied and pasted a link farm, putting it forth AS IF it were a goodwill gesture that took no effort and failed to attribute the original site, while knowing darn well that it was going to garner him a bunch of backlinks.

Are you really saying I would be jealous or upset by that? If so, then my original message to you, and about you, still stand - stronger than ever.

Hope you at least got something out of the "piling on" experience, though.

And if you want to get into a side conversation, your characterization of me as "spamming" and as "admitting that I spammed" is as much of a lie as anything we've heard yet, if not moreso. Mailing the Top 20 Popular users with an invitation to participate, or not, is not BULK... and it is NOT sent to their email address. It was, nothing more, than a community-based effort... and 20 out of 1000s cannot be called bulk. So far that's several people who have slandered me while accusing me of slandering them...

"Of course I may be right since my rank jumped around 40K since yesterday. May be related in part to the additional links or may just be a fluke."

The point is, you don't know... and you don't know what having your link on a viral LINK SPAM campaign is going to do to your rank either. There's short term effects and long term effects. Why would you praise a cheap, lazy, copy/paste of a LINK FARM when you don't even know how it's really going to affect you over the long haul?

"I saw Sushi's post as nothing but positive. Google is not going to penalize any one for a single post. Well they might is that was the only content you had. Worse comes to shove they throw the one page out of the index. Big deal."

I love it. You're a spokesperson for Google now? The point is not limited to the potential fallout. It's that YOU and OTHERS were made unwitting partners in a viral LINK SPAM campaign and run around screaming "Hallelujah!" thanks for the link! Now, like a good little victim, you are second guessing what Google would or wouldn't do when it's already clear that they, and other search engines, do not like LINK FARMS, especially when they start replicating with the same exact links in them... lol

"Maybe before we start talking about how Google will dump on link farms perhaps we should look around the web at some of the sites around DMOZ is nothing more than a link farm. Yahoo Directory is nothing more than a link farm. Digg is nothing more than a link farm. On a basic level this can be said of every social site out there. They seem to do Okay with Google."

Here, before you say anything more on this topic, you should have a look at someone who ran the numbers: http://www.submitsuite.com/blog/how-google-page-rank-update-is-affecti..

Besides, this is not about directories which are clearly identified as such. This is about blog posts that start appearing out of nowhere with the same 900-1000 links on them. Hello? Anybody home?

"I look at this on a risk reward basis. Perhaps as Sam pointed out there is a slight risk that Google or Technorati may care about someone posting the grid. I doubt if it was done in moderation on each site then they would not even notice."

And therein lies the vast difference between theory and experience... between fantasy and reality... because there is a huge presumption that such a thing would be done in moderation. And all the while, the main point remains that, without your knowledge or permission, you have been made an unwitting participant in a viral link spam campaign. You had no say in the matter, and you, as well as a few others, come out in praise of it.

I think that's worthy of reporting... lol You only distract from that point when you start fantasizing about what directories and people might or might not do when its already a known fact that they don't like link spam or link farms.

"But what would the reward be. If only half the people who had a link on the grid posted this then it would raise the authority and rank of every blog in the grid. Technorati only counts recent links so the benefit would not be all encompassing, but it would raise the awareness of the blogs in the short term. This would mean more traffic for all the blogs and give everyone a chance to raise their subscriber count. Sounds like a community building project to me. And I don't see a lot of risk here for people who wish to participate."

Sounds EXACTLY like a link spam campaign upon which Technorati frowns: http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/4-ways-to-get-banned-from-technorati-1..

John Chow even felt the sting of that one. So why don't we all just listen to you and potentially bring Technorati down on us as well? Bravo.

"Sushi, perhaps you could zip up the code to create the grid with the smaller thumbnails and offer them up for download to those people who may not have the HTML skills to recreate it. Would help the cause a lot. :-)"

Thanks to this dialogue, the more discerning readers will now know to avoid you like the plague.

"After all Sam, maybe in 2-3 years I'll catch up and learn something about the web as you pointed out in your PM to me."

After this, I think it's going to be more like 4-5 but hope springs eternal and I wish you well.

@bruce (no nonsense tips) - one more thing, you said,

"Yeh, I was a little shocked by the response I received too by just saying I thought Jason had a good idea. By the way I just re-posted the Grid. Of course only after removing Sam's link to his blog. :-)"

First of all, thank you for removing my link from the viral link spam campaign. Second, you're the kind of liar people need to avoid. My words are plainly visible for everyone to verify. In your case, you wrote to say that what Gorilla did was BETTER than the "Love Thy Entrecard Neighbor" meme. His was a cheap, lazy copy of the All Users page and your thinking that was BETTER was why I highlighted your comment as pure idiocy - because my blog's purpose is to highlight that such controversy and idiocy exist.

Now, I only call it idiocy now in relation to you because you brought it up and you have now lied about exactly what you said. And I had left your comment anonymous - I did not name you at all.

And I didn't give you a tongue lashing but I did write back emphatically that you were admiring a cheap, unattributed copy/paste effort over a creative way of introducing Entrecarders to NEW Entrecarders.

But this is why I suffer these conversations so that the lurkers can see what they are really up against - no heat, no cake.

"Feel free to snatch the HTML from the post if you desire."

In other words, "feel free to follow me into potential harm to your rankings out of a stupid, high school level act of defiance". That's not too bright.

@Jdonuts -

"I had been feeling a little guilty about ignoring Sams PM's asking me to participate in his linking projects.

Now I feel a lot better about ignoring his requests."

Now you'll understand why I ignored you and responded to you as minimally as possible. You were the one who wrote to me begging for link in exchange for linking to me on YOUR site. Ring a bell?

I only wrote to include you in a couple of things because you had waxed on so admirably about me that I thought it was a kind thing to do but you are a prime example of "biting the hand that feeds you."

Anyone who doesn't believe me can just view the comment section of my first Entrecard Meme where he asks me to link to him.

"Sam, I've just added you to my blog list (sorry, after John Chow) that goes to every page of blog.jdonuts.com I was wondering if you could do the same. (seeing you are such a self admitted LW)."

He's only mad because I didn't and, as you can see, contributes nothing in the way of the main point in the article that started this conversation.

However, I am glad he has finally found someone with whom he can relate more successfully via this thread.

@TotalWebReview - With all due respect, you must have only done a PARTIAL web review. That article, and the original one to which it refers, mention sizes down to 125x125. We are dealing with something more like 25x25 here. Also, while this is NOT the point of all this, I believe that only refers to Google's ability to handle link farms or paid links site with images.

So, even though I disagree with the belief that Google would simply nofollow the images in these link spam articles, if you are saying that they would, then you are also agreeing that they see them as violating guidelines. The fact that they might or might not "kid glove" them with "nofollows" is absolutely not the point. The point is that they would view it as a violation. And if they would, its all too likely that other SEs will see it the same way - as a link spam farm.

You are engaged in an SEO side-debate of "whether or whether not" such pages would eventually harm people. While I am pointing out that, whether or not you and I ever agree, there's all kinds of people who were, against their knowledge and will, swept up in this matter by a copy/paste mugging of the All Cards page posing as link-love.

I have to laugh at the pun, but even a MONKEY could have done that. ;-) There's nothing so special or praise-worthy about copying and pasting someone else's links page, especially in a way that can go viral and potentially harm the sites on it.

THAT is the point - not whether or not Google so kindly tacks on "nofollow" to images which I believe you are mistaken.

How much clearer can it get than this: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=6635..

Sam

@bigpappa -

nothing bad said about gorilla personally that I recall and I said if it is shown to me, I stand corrected on that. But I am referring to the action that was a bonehead move and potentially harmful to everyone on the All Cards page. Now, if people want to argue the minutiae, that's fine, but the original point is that the All Cards page started off as a fine and friendly gift but someone, in a cheap attempt to get backlinks, mugged it with a brainless copy/paste to their website, failed to credit the author, and started getting praised for it even though

1. no one on that page was aware of it or given a choice to opt in or opt out; and
2. it can potentially negate the efforts of every site owner on there if it continues to spread and is, ultimately, viewed as a link farm.

Ya wanna have a beer with the guy, go ahead. But right now, I'm referring to something more serious than many of the people in this thread are apparently aware.

@AboutEveryLittleThing -

"Oh please Sam, enough with the doomsday attitude already. I much prefer the link wall post than thinly disguised attempts to garner linkbacks through the use of memes."

lol you should decide for everyone on the All Cards page that their unwittingly being incorporated into a viral link farm is doomsday?

Let me highlight why your comment makes no sense at all. You refer to the use of memes as a "thinly disguised attempt to garner backlinks." Darling, there's nothing thinly disguised about using a meme for backlinks. That is a most obvious and primary use for them.

The beauty of memes is that if it's no good, or fails to catch on, the owner gets no backlinks. If it IS good and it DOES catch on, then the author deserves them.

I really hope that's not your best. Your preference for a mere copy and paste mugging of a links page that could, if it goes viral, potentially dampen your efforts to gain more traffic tells me everything I need to know about you as an authority on "anything" never mind "everything".

Besides, you should be more concerned with comments by the next guy to whom I'm about to reply, "I Am A Funny Sexist Pig. Do you think I’m a sexist pig? Fine. Think my posts are objectionable? Great! There are many things in life that are objectionable."

That's the kind of person with whom your thinking is currently in alignment.

@Caveman -

For a "caveman", you sure are sensitive.

Like a couple of others here, you conveniently misrepresent what you said to suit yourself but, fortunately, the original conversation is in public view right on your blog.

You precisely stated, "So, while I think memes are lame at best and will not be participating,"

So I was referring to the fact that you would not participate in memes, in general. You never referred to my meme but to memes in general. And it was to THAT I attributed your stinginess.

If you can't handle life outside the cave, then you might want to rethink this blogging thing. My comment was pretty mild but your coming here and lying about what you did and said, that anyone can verify, tells me you aren't comfortable with even the mildest of disagreements.

And the blogosphere is full of 'em... especially if you are stingy, or lie.

@JoeTech -

Your analysis sounds very rational but it's way off. If you think I wrote that post for an 80/20 benefit to myself and that GS only did it for a 50/50 then you should have stopped right at the point where you said, "I won't pretend to be the world's foremost authority on the topic," as that really said it all right there.

I didn't do any of it for me. And you know he knew damn well that it would be a cheap and easy way to get backlinks, period. The fact that not a single person on that page, which started out as a FINE idea, had ANY say, whatsoever, in whether or not their site would become part of a viral link spam campaign that could potentially harm their long-term standings is what's in question here.

By your logic, let's say we both chip in and put an ad in the newspaper promoting 100 area businesses whom, without even knowing them, we chose straight from the "Chamber of Commerce" guide. Then we say, "Merry Christmas" at the bottom and feel great about what we did.

Sure, some will say thanks... but do you think maybe some of them might be a little P.O.'d that they weren't consulted? Or didn't have the right to opt out? What if some were selling their business, or moving? What if they were settling a lawsuit? There are so many reasons why just copying someone else's link page into a viral link spam campaign is totally cheap and self-serving.

It gives NO consideration to the site owners at all. It offers NO choice to the site owners at all. If someone wants to get out of that mess, they have to track down anyone else who does it and request removal. Whereas, if they wanted out of Entrecard's page, it would only take one email.

But that isn't even the point... the point is that it was a cheap ploy for backlinks that required no effort and that even you think was more genuine than my posting about it.

Well, then good luck to you, my friend because you clearly have things backwards.

This thread would make great bedtime reading .... zzzzzzzzzzz :p

Clearly not for everyone, just like your website.

Wow Gorilla, I had no idea that huge page of Entrecard links was going to cause this massive flurry of chest beating. PhiRate is one of the creators of Entrecard isn't s/he? PhiRate doesn't appear to be upset by this whole thing, so why is it such a huge controversy? I realize I will probably get a quote pulled out of this little comment, which will be dissected and examined under the microscope, and then I will be told I don't know anything and should just keep quiet while the big boys play.

However, I have read Gorilla Sushi for a number of months and never found the blog to be link crazy or anything except a really entertaining blog. I will not pretend to understand why anyone does anything, especially on the internet, but I will never believe that the Gorilla would do anything to harm anyone. The Gorilla in the person of Jason is a good man and he writes (with his partners) a good blog.

Wow, Sam, that's a lot of tl;dr. Succinctness is a good thing. You might want to try it sometime.

Whao! I thought the lovelink was a nice Xmas gift. I'm stunned by the violent exchange of blows by the big-boys. I guess, I won't do the copy and paste yet, until I learn more. ;-)

@frogs - sharing a sincere observation doesn't get you quoted, dissected and analyzed. But suggesting it was going to happen, like a snarky little frog certainly does. It's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy" - welcome to your world.

@abouteverylittlething - are you still trying inject your unrelated commentary into this mix? The replies were to 14 people; so, take a few moments to collect yourself, and, in light of that, share with readers your interpretation of "succinct"

@brotee - so far, I commend you, at least, on your wait-and-see position. Unlike some of the others on here, what matters is not one's little raindrop of an opinion but whether or not the action in question can have serious long-term effects.

You know, if someone spoke up against ASBESTOS, shortly after it came out, there'd be all kinds of people like the ones in this thread giving their opinions, and others, intentionally distracting and diverting attention away from the serious matter at the center.

It doesn't take a genius to analyze and reason these things out. The irony is that I only APPEAR to be a genius because of the quality of the opposition. Seriously, someone else has to have something intelligent to say about this other than Phirate with whom, though, I disagree.

If not, then why create dozens of irrelevant side arguments?

Whew, now I'm spent. Ok, now that it's over, lets all meet somewhere east of the Mississippi for a cocktail. Assuming that location doesn't create more controversy or is an ethnocentric assumption mistakenly omitting the NON North American members. Uh ohh. Did I just make a bo-bo here?

Wow, I'm a snarky little frog. Welcome to my world. Actually I'm a stack of snarky little frogs, welcome back to my world. Big Pappa, can I get a gin and tonic please?

Would that be Bombay?

I'm a tad bit late to the discussion but I'll add my two cents anyway. I'm not going to claim to be an expert in SEO or the like but I have done my share of research.

From my understanding, an awful lot of bloggers would have to put this on their blogs in order to really tick Google off. Now, if hundreds of these picture grids were popping up in do follow blogs over a short period of time, I would be getting nervous (I can't help but think of the wrath brought down on those real estate websites shudder and yeah, I know that's a bit different) but that's not the case so I'll hold off on panic mode.

People who run a website or blog who don't quite get what a link farm is or how it affects things would be wise to research it a little just to get the fundamentals because it's beneficial for webmasters to keep informed about these kinds of issues.

Not trying to say anyone who posted the picture grid is uninformed or anything of the sort. It's just a little friendly advice and I hope it doesn't come across rude or condescending, as it was not meant to.

@Total Web Review. Google will pick up on standard ad image sizes and auto no follow those, not all images just as an FYI. :)