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I'm not sure what is involved with GetSatisfaction, but I know that the Rip Off Reports guy thumbs his nose at everyone and will absolutely never take anything down unless he is paid. And there is no requirement for putting something up (in fact, false accusations are known to be made very frequently not by consumers or visitors, but the site's own staff). You just create an account and post whatever you like and libel people (not merely companies, but even your next door neighbor or an ex or your coworker) and it will never be taken down, unless you join their expensive program, at which point you can suddenly have such things removed. (Oh, also note that you can't have an accusation removed even if you are the one that wrote it and later changed your mind). The guy behind it is about as shady as you can be - even for the internet.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-02-01/news/the-real-rip-off-report/1/

http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/public-spam-report-google-your-honeymoon-with-rip-off-report-has-to-stop/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/chris-bennet-on-rip-off-report

If there is someone you dislike, you can get revenge very simply and effectively by destroying their reputation without any possible recourse. Just crate a fake account and go to the website and start making shit up. Accuse them of criminal activities. Of fraud. Hell, accuse them of rape and child abuse. Include their full name and address and place of employment and anything else you like. It will stay there and when other people look up their name, they'll see these complaints on what an ignorant person would otherwise view as a legitimate consumer advocacy website. Pretty effective! Hell, try this out on your competitor, if you're in business.

Anyway, you can google all you like about it. I was pretty astonished when I heard about it and started digging around.

FYI, this is what better research (empirical, more samples) looks like:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

I remember Altavista. Horrible results.

Not true. AltaVista is now the only remaining engine to publish link data, after MS pulled the plug on backlink results from yahoo as one of the steps toward the site's dissolution in favor of Bing. Who knows how long it will last, but it's there now.

Observe the backlinks to a recent slashdot story.

At least with our capitalist systems, we have Constitutions to chain our governments from being abusive, elections to remove dickheds from said government, and Courts to protect the citizens from abuse by one another or the corporations.

Of course thats what those laws are for, to prevent people from being abused by things like fake DMCA notices, , litigation that is more or less 'legal blackmail', and no president would invade another country for no reason and highly support crimes like torture for fear of impeachment. Isn't it great?

You don't set a cookie with their opt-out. Opt-out has to be the default (because if they've opted out, you can't set a cookie saying they've opted out). You set a cookie saying they've opted in.

If you read the requirements of section 6 of the rfc (I've linked to it and cut-n-pasted it a few times in this discussion), sites that don't get informed consent before setting a cookie are already non-compliant with the existing standard. If they've consented, from a programming perspective, it's like logging them in. You don't need a user name and password to log someone in - just generate a unique id, store it on the server, and set the cookie. You now have a fully-featured session, not just a cookie. You can set it to expire in so many minutes/hours/days/whatever, expire on browser close, or not expire unless the user logs out. Just inform the user.

Of course, unless you're offering the user some other benefit, they won't accept this. It's up to you to figure out how to make this attractive.

As for google analytics, you need more than cookies - you need javascript enabled, and google analytics slows down page loads enough so that people will sometimes just go elsewhere. In tests using a proxy to rewrite a page and remove the analytics code, I found pages loaded quicker, even taking into account the delay induced by running through a proxy, parsing out the page, and removing google's code. But don't take my word for it - interesting discussion of some issues here..

In Europe, at least, this comes under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/rights/ Here's a more friendly synopsis: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-uk-law-criminalizes-stealth-marketing-techniques

Oh yeah, that's a great idea.

That's a good wager - http://www.seomoz.org/dp/top-domains - SEOMOZ's linkscape tool (a web crawling tool for SEO metrics) gives Wikipedia the most inbound links of any site at 87Million, 13Million (17.5%) more than the next site Google!

IMO SEOMOZ rocks, perhaps I'll get some Moz-Karma for posting here?

Ha ha!

First thing that comes to mind...

I wonder how useful this kind of aggressive C&Ding is in actually protecting one's market share? I mean, let's say Apple lost trademark protection over the word "iPod," and it becomes a generic term. They're still the Apple iPod. They've still got the ipod.com domain. They can still call themselves "The Original iPod." They've still got iTunes and their proprietary DRM. And they still have control over the lion's share of the market. As long as they still have their product design and logo trademarked, nobody will mistake a knock-off iPod with the real thing, and any company that starts calling its player an iPod is just setting itself up for a poor comparison with the real thing, and at best anonymity, at worst, disrepute.

For a contrast, look at what happened to Xerox. They once had a commanding lead in photocopies, so much that their name nearly became verbed. They no longer suffer that threat, thanks to their efforts to protect their trademark. But neither do they have their commanding lead any more.

Hmm, looks like someone else wondered about this before I did.

This is not a surprise. That is simply another example of nature's laws on the web. This is not much different from the now well known fact that most stories on Digg are submitted by a handful of people (see: Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg's HomePage Content).

I agree though, reading comments at Digg is about as satisfying as gouging my own eyes out.

Wow... Two mentions in a single week on the site. I feel humbled - thanks /.

When Brad (Stone) originally wrote the piece, it was to be featured in Wired magazine. However, Chris Anderson, the magazine's editor, didn't like the piece in its final form, so Brad sold it to Newsweek. Brad and I spent about 4 hours together here in Seattle for the initial interview and another 5-10 in emails and phone calls.

I think he's done a good job of trying to encapsulate the industry from an outside perspective, but there's certainly more to be said and several inaccuracies (I pointed out several here).

SEO is more and more about influencing relevance via popularity - building links and building content that will generate links and recognition. I'm sure no one konws this better than Slashdotters. The industry has a long way to go to build public trust, but it's definitely a goal of mine and I believe the article should help.

This is the same company that was recently covered on slashdot with their beginner's guide to SEO.

They also have a great search engine ranking factors list that contains a large list of the factors that influence rankings in the major SEs.

This is the same company that was recently covered on slashdot with their beginner's guide to SEO.

They also have a great search engine ranking factors list that contains a large list of the factors that influence rankings in the major SEs.

After some careful analysis I have managed to condense all the information needed to answer that question. It can be found here.

Ah, I just noticed the author Brett Tabke now has adwords on that page...and I just gave it a backlink. How lame...That said, go to seamoz seo beinnger guide for info on seo. SEO is now a commodity and any of the many available seo guides are sufficient.

'How to Conduct Keyword Research' http://www.seomoz.org/articles/bg3.php
"1. Brainstorming - Thinking of what your customers/potential visitors would be likely to type in to search engines in an attempt to find the information/services your site offers (including alternate spellings, wordings, synonyms, etc). "

Hmm...thinking of something that people would mistype in a search engine...
got it - bobos ttis bresats!

These guys wrote a search ranking factors article a month or two ago that is also a worthy read.

That's in there. I think it's page four of TFA. They hit all the key points:

Accessiblity
Valid HTML/CSS
Good, Well written content

This article seems to know what it's talking about, and doubles as a decent guide to good web design principle. Awesome.