Daryl Lau (Earn-Money-Blogging.com) has been openly promoting his clever MY List initiative to “…help all Malaysian bloggers gain links to their blogs”. The plan goes like this… any blogger wishing to participate in the scheme will email Daryl their information by May 31st. Come June 15th, all participants must download the final version of MY List and paste the links (with anchor text) in a new post on their respective blogs. An almost similar project called 2000 Bloggers was discontinued in February because it drew flak from both Technorati and fellow bloggers alike. This happened despite Tino’s (the person who started 2000 Bloggers) intention of having fun with the collage, rather than “game” Technorati. Whereas, Daryl had openly announced that the objective for the MY List project was for: “Improving Pagerank and Technorati rank of Malaysian blogs. The objective of improving Pagerank is targetted for July’s PR update while Technorati rank improvement will be ongoing with many experiencing it fully between June and July 2007.” Apart from causing an outrage, I see a couple of potential problems with this arrangement: 1. The blogs may be seen as a Link Farm and penalized by the search engines. 2. The search engines can likely detect such “unnatural” reciprocal links and discount them, e.g. no relevant text surrounding the links, unusually high ratio of links to page content and a sudden increase in incoming links. 3. It will be an interlink of irrelevant blogs with different contents and Pageranks. 4. If there was a scheduled Pagerank update in July, then June 15th is likely too late. 5. It may only mildly benefit your Technorati Rank because the rankings are not only based on the number of links, but the authority of the linking blog. 6. How do you detect if a participant doesn’t keep his/her end of the bargain? I wish Daryl and company the best in their project, and I can only hope that it doesn’t give us Malaysians a bad name. Unlike Google’s Pagerank or Alexa Rank, the Technorati Rank isn’t just another number but will involve the entire Technorati blogging community. Also, some of the participants don’t seem to be aware of what they’re getting themselves into, if the comments on this post by 5xmom are an indication. Anyone care to share their two cents?
Yo bro… thank god you deleted the earlier one cos now I have more time to reply properly after reading all the articles you linked on this post which is great research work on your part. Hmm.. let me recall some of what I typed just now (scratch head).
Err… oh yes.. Thank you for reviewing our humble little project which is so tiny and confined that I really do not think it will make the kind of impact mentioned on one of articles you linked to. I can understand some of the point raised but that fella was talking about 2,000 links. We’d be lucky if we can even touch 10% of that but thats besides the point.
If you read some of the posts made by those participating in this once again tiny insignificant to the world program, you’ll see that we have a greater cause to it than just the promotional aspect. Although I said it is insignificant to the world, it is of huge importance for us Malaysian bloggers. I will not go into details but you can read the jest of it from the participating blogs.
You did raise a good point in No.6 and the answer is simple, although those of us who started the ball rolling did come up with a contingency action plan against defaulters, we prefer to look at the positive side and giving our fellow countrymen blogger the benefit and unwavering trust.
I shall end here for now cause any longer I can write a whole new post on my blog already. :)
Cheers!
Regards,
Daryl
Comment by Daryl W.T. Lau — April 13, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
Wow, you are so worried that even Daryl’s blog did not get a link?
Comment by lilian — April 13, 2007 @ 4:02 pm
Daryl: The point I was trying to raise was the openess in your objective to “game” Google and Technorati. If the main intention was really to gather Malaysian bloggers, then I think it’s a good idea to “reword” the objective? Just an advice.
Like the example I gave, 2000 Bloggers wasn’t created with any ill intentions yet it was criticized by the blogging community because of the way it was implemented. I don’t wish to see the same thing happen to your project.
Comment by Larry — April 13, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
Lilian: I took the effort to personally invite you to comment this morning for two reasons (1) it was the comments in your MY List article that prompted me to write; and (2) I wanted the opinions of respected Malaysian bloggers like yourself.
Unfortunately, instead of making mature and intelligent comments, you assumed that I’m Singaporean, made a wild accusation and went on to stereotype all Singaporeans as being “kiasu”.
Despite my explanation, not only that you did not apologize for getting your facts wrong, but continued with your sarcastic and arrogant reply.
As if that’s not enough, you’ve come to my blog to make an unwarranted remark. FYI, I did not leave out Daryl’s link on purpose - infact I didn’t even notice that I’d overlooked that.
Daryl’s objective on his blog was very clear, i.e. to “improve the Pageranks and Alexa Ranks of Malaysian bloggers”. Presumably to get better deals off TLA, PPP, ReviewME, etc.
It wasn’t to “gather Malaysian bloggers”. And that’s what this article was based on.
Anyway, I won’t waste my time on such childish exchanges with you. This article was written with good intentions and I invited your opinion out of respect. I’ve definitely loss all my respect for you after today.
Comment by Larry — April 13, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
Alrighty.. whatever said and done, I believe you were concern for us and wanted to make sure we do the right thing in which I appreciate. I will take you advice and make the necessary alteration as per your comment above.
In regards to Lilian… you should know what you’re getting yourself into when it comes to the present top Most Obnoxious Blogger in the entire world. LOL! Chill bro… we’re all in this for the betterment of every Malaysian blogger and things become clearer when we focus on that specific goal.
I do believe as well in your ability when it comes to SEO or Internet Marketing, perhaps if you can help all of us improve, that would make a world of difference!
Cheers!
Warm regards,
Daryl W.T. Lau
Comment by Daryl W.T. Lau — April 14, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
Daryl: glad you understand where I’m coming from.
Regarding Lilian, well I think it’s going to take a while to get use. This is actually an online marketing (not personal) blog, hence, it’s kinda difficult to have those types of comments here.
That’s part of what I’m trying to achieve with this blog - see “SEO Training” in the categories? I’ll be dispensing more tips in the future.
Comment by Larry — April 14, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
hi larry, see you again ! :) it is good you contribute something to malaysian, I heard “2000 bloggers” case 2 months ago, and understand your worries. Maybe Lilian misunderstand you, take it easy. At least you gave Daryl a better idea on how to implement it.
p/s : you now stay in Malacca or KL ?
Comment by james — April 15, 2007 @ 11:12 am
James: thanks for dropping by! I’m currently based in Malacca, and travel up north or down south occassionaly. If you’re based in KL, we could meet up for a chat in the last weekend of April.
Comment by Larry — April 15, 2007 @ 11:42 am