First, the release of Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge engine that crawls the web to calculate the answers to questions. And now Yahoo!’s announcement that they’re going to can the links and just throw out the answers because that’s what searchers want.

Bold? yes. Interesting? sure. Successful? not a chance.

The problem with both Wolfram Alpha and Yahoo?’s new direction is that if they suck, they’re going to fail, and if they rock, they’re going to fail.

Let’s pretend Wolfram Alpha improves to the point where it works well for most queries and Yahoo? is able to do the same. Let’s even extend the fantasy to the point where both search engines gain traction and a large market share.

What’s going to happen? Most content producers are going to lose the incentive to produce good content.

Search engines crawl the web getting free content, skirting the fringe of copyright by allowing webmasters to block them if they choose, and in exchange they send free traffic to the content producers who are able to make money by selling crap or showing ads for crap.

A successful Wolfram Alpha and Yahoo? won’t be sending the content producers free traffic, they’ll take the best content while preventing the people who create the content from profiting.

Dead-tree media companies already howl about Google crawling their and making it accessible to people even though they get preferential treatment. Stop giving them their cut and get ready to see them unleash the dogs of law before finally going all dinosaur on the world.

While Wolfram Alpha and Yahoo? are fighting, and losing, legal challenges, there’s only one realistic outcome. Content producers are going to block Wolfram Alpha and Yahoo? from crawling their sites.

It may be killing a great and useful idea, but, if someone can kill the electric car, then killing these two seems rather trivial and profitable.

Photo Credit: Moore Fun

Wolfram Alpha and Yahoo!: Destined for Failure is a post from: Damon Gudaitis

In case you didn’t know the importance of server speed, have a careful look at the time spent downloading a page and the crawl rate in this screenshot from Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Crawl Rate

The Importance of Server Speed is a post from: Damon Gudaitis

It took Google about 1 day to react to the hyves subdomain disclosure.

In case you can’t be bothered to click the above link, it seems that for a short while the G-spot was disclosing whether a domain was penalized in the SERPs when you entered hyves.domain.com.

This is my third site and it has the lowest starting page rank of any site I’ve created: PR 0. I’m curious why.

Of course big G has plugged this evil leak so I don’t know if I’ve been penalized. But I’m left wondering if I’ve been penalized and wondering why.

I haven’t done anything to deserve a penalty. I don’t really believe that I’m suffering a penalty because Google sends me traffic for long-tail terms that I deserve to rank for and nothing for competitive terms that I didn’t expect.

But why can’t I check anyway?

I’d like to know if my early auto industry post which generated spammy, non-reciprocated, track-backs that soon disappeared signalled my new domain as spam.

I originally purchased my name as a domain about 2 years ago with Bluehost.

I then let the registration lapse and Network Solutions started spamming me telling me my-name.com was available.

I was forced to do business with Network Solutions when a domain I wanted was pre-sold through an exclusive domain affiliate deal.

Let’s just say that imo they are part of the problem, not the solution.

What I’d like to know is if I’ve been penalized because Bluehost or, more likely, Network Solutions put up a spammy parking page between when I first registered my name and now.

I’m not bitter at Google. They are sending traffic in volumes consistent with new sites like mine. And they obfuscate Page Rank so it’s possible there isn’t any real penalty.

Still, I’d like to know.

What’s Wrong with Penalty Disclosure? is a post from: Damon Gudaitis

Everyone is writing about how Internet-based business will win even in the face of a recession. It seems like I get at least one article a day about it in my feed reader. The problem is that everyone whoe blogs about Internet business is invested in its success, myself included.

I was looking for some independent information eCommerce in a recession earlier today, so I googled ecommerce recession.

eCommerce Recession SERPS

The first page of results consists mostly of yay eCommerce pages, but I give Google credit for the #3 comScore report on an eCommerce recession. Too bad the author doesn’t know the definition of recession (hint: 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth, not 1 month).

The second page is even more revealing. Most of the posts cite the same two reports, one by Forrester Research and the other by Sandford-Bernstein. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the Bernstein report, and I didn’t feel like registering to maybe find the Forrester report.

As long as search engines use links as a ranking factor, search results for Internet-related queries are going to be biased towards pages touting the benefits of eWhatever because Internet-savvy people are the ones doing the most writing and linking and have a vested interest in promoting content that reminds them of their greatness.

Internet Bias in Search Results is a post from: Damon Gudaitis