We’ll consider this a micro-blog for now, as I don’t have the time here right at the month end for my freelance writing business to sacrifice the time to a longer post.
How easy do you think it would be for Google and / or Delicious themselves to segregate users based upon how many links they add to their bookmarks that there are zero other users having favorited?
Think about it. Innumerable SEO experts and backlink building strategies all use Delicious and other social bookmarking tools to build links to their own websites, or to their client’s websites. Of course, when 99.9% of those bookmarks are first submitted that particular user is the only one to have submitted that particular favorite webpage.
In order to filter out those throwaway profiles that exist for no reason other than to build self-serving backlinks to their own online pages, a simple algorithm that checked to make sure a specific percentage (say 30% if you were looking to just weed out the worst abusers, or 50%+ if you were looking to really separate the wheat from the chafe) of favorited sites were also favorited by at least one other person (or maybe even 10 other people) would eliminate virtually all of the users who just create a profile in order to link their own stuff.
That would allow you to crawl sites like Delicious without having to worry about giving too much credit to spammy links while at the same time being able to capitalize on the giant crowd sourcing power that runs sites like Delicious.
Of course, you would have to keep such an algorithm secret, which Google, at least, is good at doing, in order to avoid having sneaky Internet Marketing types throw in a good good link every 2 or 3 junk links.
Does Google do this?
How would I (or anyone else) know?
All I know is that it is probably worth it to send in a favorite from time to time that I know has a lot of other favorites out there already in order to make sure I don’t look like one of "them."
It isn’t that I’m particularly spammy, it is just that I don’t really use services like Delicious (Firefox + Xmarks = all the portable bookmarks I need without the lag of being online) and I don’t think that I necessarily should incur any sort of penalty for that fact. So, if you stumble upon (another example of a site that this would work good for) my Delcious bookmarks or Stumble Upon profile, rest assured that in addition to links to a lot of my writing around the web, you will also be sure to find plenty of other links that are used by a lot of people out there.
The best part is, that there is no deception necessary. I only think to links, favorite, bookmark, or stumble my best resources anyway, unless I’m in a feisty mood. So, end the end, I guess it is a win-win for everyone involved.
Phew, 508 words. I guess it isn’t a micro-post after all 🙂