Less than a week after Google rolled out Knol, its “Wikipedia killer”, the blogosphere has decided to whip itself into a frenzy. The major cause of the consternation - Google seems to be ranking Knol pages, which are supposed to be filled with content from a never-ending and every-increasing number of “experts”, a bit higher than the average SEO junkie might suspect.

Sounds like competition to me.

Is Google bad or is Google good? I don’t think the “experts” really know for sure, but I do see a pattern emerging. When blogs became popular, those working behind the scenes figured out that comments and trackbacks were a good way to generate search engine attention - and they latched onto the best ranked blogs. When the search engines figured this out, they appealed to the best of the best to add the “nofollow” tag to their discussion threads to weed out the scum. The big blogs agreed, I believe out of fear that Google would see discussions without the tag and bump down the renegades accordingly. All was well, as the favored few remained high on the first page list.

Unfortunately, content creators are now coming under increasing stress. The sole business motive, advertising, is showing signs of weakness. Purveyors of online expertise are crying for folks to click on their ads - they ask “why give the money to Google?”. Meanwhile, they beg at Google’s feet for traffic - it’s the proverbial biting of the hand that feeds you.

What’s even more odd about all this, and what would clue the average internet surfer into how badly the tech blogosphere needs a twenty-ton dose of Ritalin, is that the crowd waited until the day after they pounced on Cuil, a potential Google search competitor, before releasing their joint statement on the evil Knol. Yes, after giving a well-publicized Google search competitor a general thumbs neutral/negative (not entirely unearned, since Cuil had major technical problems on the day of its launch) the virtual chatterbox moves on to complain about the fact that Google might be infringing on their territory by juicing its own search results with competitive content.

Instead of recognizing the the signs of an impending threat and rallying behind the future generation, content creators are playing cards for the small pot instead of the final table. To be fair, some have a clue - seek alternatives and take action instead of pissing in the wind. Still, discussion revolves around quick fixes.

Budding surgeons don’t pass their boards by suggesting band-aids for severed femoral arteries, and it seems much of the tech blogosphere forgot their hemostats on this trip to the operating room.

There is no doubt that a lot of the holiday gifts rolling off the shelves about now are going to be the newfangled electronic kind. And some of the recipients are just going to plug those “gizmos” in and go. That flat screen TV, the new mini-stereo and the remote controlled blender are probably immune to the need for reading directions - that new PC (and a bunch of other storage devices, phones, and the like) may not be. It is not just about connecting that shiny new machine to the net, and getting infected with some virus, malware, or other computing malignancy inside of the first 20 minutes it is on - it is about data security as well. All those pictures and music you upload are valuable content - you have to protect it. The address book in your cell phone even more so.

So in the grand scheme of staying safe this holiday season, here are a few tips worth following.

After reading this article in USA Today, I began to get curious: USATODAY.com - Google’s AdSense a bonanza for some Web sites.

Yes, I know there are sites out there making a lot of money. There are also sites out there that are making little or no money, but are trying very hard to game their way in.

“Democracy” in action, but is it creating any value?

I have read from a lot of sites. News, technical forums, weblogs, aggregators, and static directories and pages all fit in to my daily information absorbtion routine. And I have found a lot of useful stuff out there.

Many sites, however, produce little or no good information. These are the pages that can’t hold their own, have nothing interesting to say, they are nothing. I suspect (highly suspect) that there is a direct relationship between useless content (whether poorly constructed or simply empty from a thought provocation perspective), and the level of cheating going on in the pay-per-click advertising realm.

What surprises me is the level and depth of the cheating; the sheer numbers engaged in it. It is all the talk nowadays, so it must be happening. There is a lot of money at stake - people are going to grab it any way they can. What they don’t realize is that in the long run (like a half-fast “consultant” selling their way into a quick gig) is that the cash flow stream will run out. Someone will patch the problem. What do they do next? Find new tricks.

Seems to me like they are spinning their wheels. Click fraud, comment spam, fake sites…it just doesn’t seem worth it. As fast as someone can cook up a scheme, there is someone smarter figuring out how to stop it. A few dollars in, a few dollar out…do the scammers ever give up?

I can think of a lot better ways to make a living (if I didn’t, I could spend any time typing these posts). I wish those hell bent on picking up two pieces of scratch would just give up, and leave the web to those who want to continually change it for the better.

But that is wishful thinking.

After reviewing this post, I realize I had gotten off track, and had already come to a conclusion. I am not sure the PPC ad market is creating value. I would like to see what the numbers look like after the dust settles. Meanwhile excuse the bias.

I ran across Mike’s Marketing Tools while doing some research for a colleague on shady SEO practices. Under it, I found Ten Controversial Search Engine Optimization Techniques, and stopped there.

Seven mentions of the word “spam” in a ten point list of SEO trickery.

But…

What really hit me about this list was the reasoning behind it - counterproductivity.

Everyone is jockeying for PageRank position, and has forgotten about just getting the content right. I know someone over at Techdirt mentioned something similar when discussing how whiny bloggers have become over syndication and aggregation of their content - I believe Techdirt put it as such: If people quit worrying about protecting their content and just putting together good content, they wouldn’t have to worry about people not reading it…kind of an if you build it RIGHT, they will come type concept. Anyway, if someone finds the original from those guys, please post as a comment, so I can re-read it, and ponder its absolute, 100% accuracy, in a world of inaccuracies.

As for the SEO spam, well is it spam or isn’t it. Spam is usually defined as unsolicited commercial email. If a search engine sends a robot out to check your site, is that unsolicited communications? Only if your robot.txt file says don’t look, don’t cache, or something like that. It certainly isn’t email, and its direct commercial applicability is questionable.

Let me know what you think, on both the stupidity of gaming the system for short-term results, as well as the “is it spam question.”