Actually, I just picked your blog at random from the many which have published the “W list” so far. So you’re just a random example here, nothing more.

You wrote:

“While organizations like technorati and others like them continue to find new ways to balance and tame the linking aspect, the entire point and success of blogs is the ability to connect easily to and with others. If we take that away or try to circumvent it from happening or being successful then we’re back to the limited connection and input of a single publisher.”

That’s very true, and I agree wholeheartedly.

That said, the reality is that link farms are a favorite tactic of spammers and others who are seeking to “game” search engines and artificially inflate their visibility. You can’t blame search engines and aggregators for combating that. If they didn’t, the net would be much less useful to us all.

Adopting the link farm strategy, regardless of content or intent, is probably not a good idea, regardless of intention.

Also, you mentioned that you published the full list twice on your site. I understand your motivations for this. But perhaps you weren’t aware that search engines tend to nullify or even penalize duplicate content on a site (since that’s another strategy people use to artificially improve search visibilty).

Here’s what Google has to say on that topic.

Again, your intentions in republishing the list are admirable. You just might want to consider these aspects of how search engines and aggregators work. They’re not trying to censor you — they’re just doing the much-needed job of limiting the damage that spammers can do to everyone’s experience of the web. In this respect, it’s better to work with them, I suspect.

There are other ways besides link farms to enhance search visibility. Like, for instance, choosing one blog per day from the list to highlight and link to. That sort of approach does the target of the link far more good in terms of search positioning and visibility than appearing in a list that may just get filtered out in search results anyway.

- Amy Gahran

- Amy

First, I’m curious what caused you to pick my blog as an image/link example in your post. I’m not sure if it’s meant as a good thing or not. LOL But it brought me here so that’s always worth something to me.

At any rate, I share the concern that when more becomes more sometimes the quality becomes diminished and some value can be lost. I think it’s unavoidable as the ultimate purpose for everyone is growth at some point and in some way. While organizations like technorati and others like them continue to find new ways to balance and tame the linking aspect, the entire point and success of blogs is the ability to connect easily to and with others. If we take that away or try to circumvent it from happening or being successful then we’re back to the limited connection and input of a single publisher. That said, finding the balance between the two is desirable and why I support the businesses that deal with it. Traffic is nothing more than traffic unless the visitors are there for the very reason the destination exists, so at the end of the day the traffic game is still just a game in my experience. And therefore not worth the amount of worry and effort that often goes into it.

I think the upside is that while everything has an opposite and good things can be turned for bad the fact is still some good came from it. Which is why I decided to publish and help feed the growth of the W-list. And the reason I posted it a second time was to showcase the caliber of person that started it because I think it’s by far more good than bad. I have truly enjoyed getting to know other bloggers on the list and so far the only ones I’ve made the time for (even with my many great intentions to get to the task) on the list are those who took the time to comment on mine or link back to my blog. Positive or negative? Probably both but I’d rather have some positive than nothing at all.

My four cents.

Hugs,
Holly

And thanks for your kind words.