Release Notes
I released the next version of BSV over the weekend. It satisfies all my criteria so this release is 1.0 (finally). Here are the release notes:
changelog.txt
What Next
Now that there is sufficient functionality for the website to be really useful without taking up too much of my time, it is time to take it to the next level. By that I mean to make sure I have a few more users than I currently have. So I need to concentrate on a bit of e-marketing.
Firstly you may have noticed from the release notes that I now have an about us page, where I unashamedly ask for people to link to the site and donate to the site so that I can invest the money in some e-marketing. In addition, there is a useful sites page which has a list of links to sites that I think are useful for my users. They are all sites that require a reciprocal link and have passed quality criteria (they have to be useful and well used).
I'll keep you posted on the traffic but some preliminary stats are looking good!
Link Farms
Let me explain something about linking to other sites.
Google's early success was largely attributable to the accuracy of the results that it returned when you did a search. It soon became clear that the algorithm that was used to prioritise results was absolutely critical. Some may think intellectual property as valuable as that would be a closely guarded secret although there is an argument that you should be as open as possible, especially when a massive number of consumers are involved. Anyhow, I'm not sure why or exactly when but Google decided to divulge the concept behind their code.
The idea is pretty simple, every web page that has been indexed is assigned a number that represents how popular it is (the page rank). For a given search the results are ordered by popularity. So how can you possibly calculate how popular a web page is without access to exhaustive usage statistics of all web pages? You can't but Google believe that with the information they have, they are able to approximate popularity. They do this by looking at how many inbound links there are and the contents that is wrapped in the links.
All good and well, as long as no one exploits this information. But this is the real world so of course the same group of marketeers that exploited older search engine technologies to improve their listings used the algorithm information similarly, to the detriment of all web users. One of the tactics they used was creating link farms. Link farms are websites or areas of a website which has the sole purpose to improve the page rank of a site by exchanging links indiscriminately. Ultimately link farms are bad because they offer no value to a user at all, they simply artificially (and therefore incorrectly) increase a website's popularity which means Google's results aren't as accurate as they used to be.
Google obviously are aware of link farms and probably are taking/have taken steps to deal with them. There is one rumour going around that when they discover a link farm they simply strip the page rank of the offending site, personally I don't think they would be quite so drastic. They certainly have been presented with a problem which isn't easily solved: how do you identify indiscriminately exchanged links with truly valuable ones in a automated manner? You either need a highly sofisticated heuristic approach which will no doubt be constantly changing or you do it manually (at least some of it).
All this is also a problem for website owners because if we choose to increase our popularity using links (and when you have no budget like me there pretty much is no alternative) how do you do it without being classed as a link farm? The answer is not to link indiscriminately and that is what BSV's useful sites page does.
I released the next version of BSV over the weekend. It satisfies all my criteria so this release is 1.0 (finally). Here are the release notes:
changelog.txt
What Next
Now that there is sufficient functionality for the website to be really useful without taking up too much of my time, it is time to take it to the next level. By that I mean to make sure I have a few more users than I currently have. So I need to concentrate on a bit of e-marketing.
Firstly you may have noticed from the release notes that I now have an about us page, where I unashamedly ask for people to link to the site and donate to the site so that I can invest the money in some e-marketing. In addition, there is a useful sites page which has a list of links to sites that I think are useful for my users. They are all sites that require a reciprocal link and have passed quality criteria (they have to be useful and well used).
I'll keep you posted on the traffic but some preliminary stats are looking good!
Link Farms
Let me explain something about linking to other sites.
Google's early success was largely attributable to the accuracy of the results that it returned when you did a search. It soon became clear that the algorithm that was used to prioritise results was absolutely critical. Some may think intellectual property as valuable as that would be a closely guarded secret although there is an argument that you should be as open as possible, especially when a massive number of consumers are involved. Anyhow, I'm not sure why or exactly when but Google decided to divulge the concept behind their code.
The idea is pretty simple, every web page that has been indexed is assigned a number that represents how popular it is (the page rank). For a given search the results are ordered by popularity. So how can you possibly calculate how popular a web page is without access to exhaustive usage statistics of all web pages? You can't but Google believe that with the information they have, they are able to approximate popularity. They do this by looking at how many inbound links there are and the contents that is wrapped in the links.
All good and well, as long as no one exploits this information. But this is the real world so of course the same group of marketeers that exploited older search engine technologies to improve their listings used the algorithm information similarly, to the detriment of all web users. One of the tactics they used was creating link farms. Link farms are websites or areas of a website which has the sole purpose to improve the page rank of a site by exchanging links indiscriminately. Ultimately link farms are bad because they offer no value to a user at all, they simply artificially (and therefore incorrectly) increase a website's popularity which means Google's results aren't as accurate as they used to be.
Google obviously are aware of link farms and probably are taking/have taken steps to deal with them. There is one rumour going around that when they discover a link farm they simply strip the page rank of the offending site, personally I don't think they would be quite so drastic. They certainly have been presented with a problem which isn't easily solved: how do you identify indiscriminately exchanged links with truly valuable ones in a automated manner? You either need a highly sofisticated heuristic approach which will no doubt be constantly changing or you do it manually (at least some of it).
All this is also a problem for website owners because if we choose to increase our popularity using links (and when you have no budget like me there pretty much is no alternative) how do you do it without being classed as a link farm? The answer is not to link indiscriminately and that is what BSV's useful sites page does.
