Slashdot Mirror
Trade of Google+1 "Likes" as a Business
siliconbits writes "Selling Google+1 "likes" is gradually becoming a rather lucrative business, helped by cheap labour and ever-falling internet access worldwide; the trend is not unlike what we saw previously with Twitter & Digg during the days except that this has a more widespread implication for SEO and could turn the nascent social networking service into a massive headache for Google as many try to game the system. Google+1 selling sites like Googleplus1supply, buygoogleplus1 or Blackcatseo have cropped up during the last few months — amongst so many other websites — with the sole aim of selling Google+1 "likes" to publishers and businesses."
like new, offer void in Wisconsin or where prohibited by law. No cash value. Buyer must take delivery by 7/29/11.
ever-falling internet access worldwide
falling??
seems like google could stop this with one simple block of code.
if somone gets a shit-ton of likes from brand new accounts that only "likes" stuff, it is an obvious partaker of purchased likes. ban.
if someone makes a brand-new account and like more than a few things a day, it is an obvious seller of likes. ban.
The only thing that Google+ is saying about their +1 affecting search ranking is that it will only increase the ranking of sites that people in your circles have +1'd.. so unless you plan on following a bunch of spam bots on Google+ I really don't see how this is an issue..
"+1 helps people discover relevant content—a website, a Google search result, or an ad—from the people they already know and trust"
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1140194
Come on, give me some +1s!
This is why "crowdsourcing" consistently fails as a method of business ranking. It's too easy to spam. Google was burned by this late last year when they were counting reviews on Citysearch and Yelp. That backfired badly. Local search results were polluted with junk entries. Google got a lot of bad press over this. Since then, they've stopped counting "likes" on competing sites, but they still count their own.
Google's ad customers have been complaining local spam for years,, and Google hasn't been able to fix it. It's become worse since Google combined local results with web search results, and the value of local spam went up.
It's a good thing they're forcing people to use real names in order to prevent abuse of the system!
...wait, you mean it's _not_ stopping people determined to exploit the system or make a nuisance of themselves, it's just harming the people interested in maintaining a long term presence on G+? Say it ain't so!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm pretty sure that Google explicitly stated at some point that +1 does not affect your results unless your friends have +1ed something. Getting +1s from fake accounts with no social connections will have absolutely no effect on your ranking in Google. Like most SEO, this is just more digital snake oil.
would be for google to not use or consider google+ pages and content for google web search index and rankings.
would keep a lot of crud from infesting search results.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Teh+Stupid+It+Burns
And another example of how SEO is a bullshit industry.
Make a good product, have good presentation, and create good relationships with your customers/clients. Or, hire an "SEO expert" to "get me first on Google." Awesome.
I wonder whether this is a legitimate article or merely advertisement for the mentioned services.
Just make it so the site only shows the likes/dislikes of people who are in your circles. Trust networks are a proven, decade-old concept.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's pretty easy to see where this is going, though, and these companies are only thinking ahead.
Google quantifies you somehow. Person A and Person B aren't friends, but they both read a lot of /. and constantly search for tentacle porn. If Person A clicks on a link involving Natalie Portman and an over-excited tentacle monster, it might display that result with more importance for Person B.
"helped by cheap labour and ever-falling internet access worldwide"
Does he mean "ever-falling COST OF internet access worldwide"?
Idiot!
[+1] will only increase the ranking of sites that people in your circles have +1'd.. so unless you plan on following a bunch of spam bots on Google+ I really don't see how this is an issue
But the +1 button was around before the Google+ field trial began. In addition to Google+ circles, +1 also uses Google Contacts, Google Talk chat contacts, Google Reader, and Google Buzz to determine social connections. But how can these be gamed?
(free)
Hey guys,
I just found this amazing new site where people are trading "+1" for their websites/articles/etc', a site which is pretty much similar to twiends, only with Google +'s.
check it out: http://www.plusbooster.com
don't forget to "+1" my site there, and get 5 free "boosts"! :) :)
please replay if you use it also, so we can contribute to each other better from here also.
I have a G+ account but can't (as of today) get it to load in Chrome. Weird.
Then rivals will pay for -1 on their competitors. Let the sh*t hit the fan!
Meta-moderation worked on /. too, why not for Google? It should be trivial to easily identify such "services" by their likes being quickly metamoderated into the ground, hence rendering all their "likes" worthless. Of course, this again can be gamed, but with enough layers of moderation, meta-moderation and meta-meta-moderation, it should become rather tricky for such "services" to continue their business against the rest of the internet users.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's see... you're posting advertising on a page for geeks and nerds who have an innate hatred for people who try to abuse "their" system and who are also well known for their zeal to protect their turf and prefer meaningful search results to bullshit advertising in them. In other words, you're talking to the people who will most likely hate you with a passion and who also happen to know a fair lot about the technology you use.
So I wonder, do you want a free audit, are you trying to find out how resilient your service is to a DDoS or are you posting the name of your competitor to have it shut down for free?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is getting slower and slower, which was the point of google, FAST accurate results.
Now with all the search for every letter key you press and prefetching previews. It has turned to SHIT, especially on slower connections when mobile.
Selling Google+1 "likes" is gradually becoming a rather lucrative business, helped by cheap labour and ever-falling internet access worldwide; the trend is not unlike what we saw previously with Twitter & Digg during the days except that this has a more widespread implication for SEO and could turn the nascent social networking service into a massive headache for Google as many try to game the system.
That rumbling you hear is a million deceased writing teachers digging out of their graves to make siliconbits diagram that "sentence."
hey look, i'm standing on your lawn with hundreds of millions of other global millennials and we cherish the thought of forcing you to accept our grammar and "incorrect" forms of activism for the rest of your fragile and worthless existence. Lulz.
Might happen, but I wouldn't bet my life savings on it. For every permanent addition to the language, there's a fad that dies the death when its time is up.
"Groovy" was a cool, popular word during the flower power era. *No-one* uses it now, except as a tongue-in-cheek invocation of the era it's inexorably tied to.
More recent example- remember 13375p34k? Pretty common a few years back. When was the last time you heard anyone use it seriously, or even tongue-in-cheek?
As for "FAIL", the way it's generally used self-consciously by bandwagon jumpers smacks of a fad. I think "LOL" will be around longer because it's common and used as instinctively as inhaling air by every mouth-breathing cretin out there.
Ironically, though it's a variant of the latter, "Lulz" is more self-conscious, more subculturey, less mainstream, and IMHO more likely to be representative of an era. It's likely to be dismissed by Anonymous' younger siblings when the former grow up and the latter take their place and want their own subcultural words.
My guess is that if you're using "FAIL" and "Lulz" in 20 years time, you'll be seen as a sad, boring out-of-touch guy living in the past.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"Google+1 selling sites [...] have cropped up during the last few months"
Hard to believe given that Google+ did not exist one month ago...
I'd love an invite if you happen to have an extra one. email: brian.f.thomasREMOVE@gmail.com (remove the remove) Thanks in advance.
There's a word for that... it's called an endorsement.
What's the difference between paying Kim Kardashian to appear in a commercial for your product and paying her to +1 your product?
paintball
Me too. I would also like an invitation.