HuffPo practices search engine pessimization - Valleywag Comments

HuffPo practices search engine pessimization

Paul Boutin — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:38:14 PDT

Stop it you guys! It doesn't matter what my experience is. The point here is that the HuffPo has set up a way to become Google result #1 for "ashley dupre naked pictures" without, you know, actually going out and getting some Ashley Dupré naked pictures. Knowing a lot about tag archive pages doesn't change that. It just helps you make obfuscated excuses.

On the upside, our scan of the NY Post's front page is now result #3, thanks to the commenter who added the word "naked" to the page while complaining.

Paul Boutin

HuffPo practices search engine pessimization

Owen Thomas — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:33:08 PDT

@Brian Lam: Paul is modest in not referencing his history developing a search engine that predates Google, but I think his experience running a blog network and practicing search-engine optimization is both more recent and more relevant.

Owen Thomas

HuffPo practices search engine pessimization

Brian Lam — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:52:11 PDT

@Paul Boutin: Paul, didn't you used to be an engineer at a seach engine? You made it sound like you were a consultant, which is not the same level of respect when it comes to understanding SEO.

Secondly, Pessimization is an interesting sounding word, but do you mean "pest"imization or pessimistic optimization?

Brian Lam

HuffPo practices search engine pessimization

Paul Boutin — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:07:30 PDT

Thanks for the career advice, really, but I ran Wired's blogs last year and used to do search engine optimization. My point is that the tags are bogus Googlebait.

Paul Boutin

HuffPo practices search engine pessimization

budd — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:16:37 PDT

This is search engine pollution at its worst.

budd

HuffPo practices search engine pessimization

ArtGoogie — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:01:45 PDT

It's not quite what it seems. Paul should spend a little time operating a blog and not just writing for one.

This is a tag archive page. Blogs have monthly archive pages, category archive pages, contributor archive pages, and tag archive pages.

The tag in question is "ashley dupre naked." There is only a single post tagged with that tag. The post is the one listed, "Ashley Alexandra Dupre: How Much is Her Story Worth?" If you click on that title, you'll get the post in question.

Had there been multiple posts with that tag, there would have been multiple post titles listed, each linked off the title.

The only somewhat odd thing is that they tagged that post with a hundred different tags. That's a bit over the top (and labor intensive). Perhaps they've outsourced the tagging to India?

ArtGoogie