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March 30, 2005
WordPress raises the ire of more than a few bloggers
WordPress is a free open source content management system. Like MovableType (what we use), but free.
There is currently a row amongst some high profile bloggers becuase WordPress has been hosting blog entries by a company which uses the high Google page ranking of the WordPress domain to get hits and ad revenue. They pay WordPress a fixed rate for this service and then give them the content.
Many are saying that this is blog spam, but as much as I like to jump on the "kill the spammers" bandwagon as the next guy - I am not sure this is really all that spammy in nature.
I think the larger issue that people are having with this is that WordPress is supposedly a free and open project that isn't out to make money. You can donate money to it and assume that the money goes to the person toiling away on the project. But if the person is making money on the side from the popularity of the project - this irks some people - especially those who are into the whole free software way of life.
Personally, while I don't know that I would say it is great that this guy is doing it, I don't really think it is that big a deal. And I am not sure that I would categorize it as spam at all. It is clearly labeled as "sponsored articles" and I couldn't find a way to get there from the site without going through Google first.
The main issue here which makes this an issue is that WordPress has nothing to do at all with the text that is written - the text is only there because it relates to text which generates high click rates from Google (not "rate" as in frequency, but as in the money paid out per click). That is what is spammy about it.
But since it isn't being shoved on you without your control, and it is clearly labeled as to what it is - I think I have a hard time calling it spam. More just "lightly sleazy".
Posted by Eric at March 30, 2005 04:54 PM
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dogg, it is a very big deal. Wordpress just was involved in the highly publicized nofollow effort to eliminate search spam. And now this? - the comic aspect just doesn't get any better!
Posted by: ezzra at March 30, 2005 08:47 PM
Other than the huge amount of "press" that this is getting now, do they actively spam blog comments/trackbacks and point back to those posts?
If that is the case, I missed that when I was reading about this and that is *totally* different (and very spammy).
Posted by: Eric at March 30, 2005 10:30 PM
People are not upset because Wordpress is making money. People are upset because Wordpress is following shady practices to make money and not talk about it. When you search the internet, when you come upon a page which has nothing to do with your search query, do you get upset? When wordpress is making money through this method, they didn't say anything to anybody about it. If they make money through killing people, would you also defend them? I don't know what kind of a relation you have with wordpress, but if you are a blogger like others you should definitely be against this practice, since it has nothing to do with making money, it is how you make it. It is also using us to do it, without our knowledge, because if you don't link to wordpress they can't do it in the first place.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward at March 31, 2005 11:56 AM
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 'WordPress raises the ire of more than a few bloggers' from spamblogging.
Excerpt: WordPress has been caught by spamming search engines by Andy Baio. They created about 120,000 small webpages stuffed by high payed keywords like “cialis”, “credit” and so on, and put invisible links on main page of wordpress.org...
Weblog: SEO Blog
Tracked: March 31, 2005 10:39 AM
Excerpt: This blogger says the WordPress folks may not have the best of open source intentions....
Weblog: Firefox
Tracked: April 3, 2005 02:31 PM
I think the best word I've heard describing it is "tacky."
But, there's perhaps some irony or cognitive dissonance going on as far as the whole being against blog spamming, but at the same time, doing the exact same SEO gaming, just via a different vector... so Google might look at it differently.
Both the cloaking, and the relevance (abuse of PR trust) compromises its PR and is grounds for slapping.
I'm not in a row so much as just rather surprised. It seems rather distasteful.
Posted by: Leonard Lin at March 30, 2005 08:38 PM