Which SteemIt Interface is Canonical?
We all know that @cheetah is a bot that does not like to see duplicate content.
There is another influential bot in this world that hates duplicate content. Its name is googlebot.
Googlebot crawls the web and determines which web sites will appear on the Google search engine.
Googlebot hates duplicate content as much as @cheetah. Googlebot is known to penalize webmasters that put duplicate content in "link farms."
The growing number of interfaces for SteemIt.com might create a problem for webmasters. Googlebot might decide all the different interfaces for SteemIt are "link farms."
I don't think this is a big issue for most SteemIt authors. People only make money on the first seven days of a post.
The canonical problem is a long term SEO issues.
For example, if you put a footer with a signature leading to your home page; Google would see the SteemIt clones producing tens of thousands of low quality links to your home page and penalize you for link spam.
I noticed that different steemit interfaces encode links differently. SteemIt.com proper adds the attribute rel="nofollow noopener" to all outbound links. The nofollow attribute tells googlebot that your link might be spam.
If you have thousands of links tagged this way; google will assume you are engaged in link spam and penalize your site. If you have a signature on your posts; you might want to use a url shortener to reduce the penalty.
The "noopener" attribute is used to protect against a strange cross-origin bug in javascript that hackers can use to phish for passwords. No-opener has the effect of telling the browser not to sent the http-referrer in the header.
Busy.org does not add these attributes. From an SEO standpoint it might be better to link your blog to your posts on busy.org than to link to the steemit.com version.
The rel="canonical" attribute is very important but is easy to misuse. You can use this tag to tell google which site is the original source of the data.
The growing number of steemit interfaces might create a world where google decides steemit is just one big link farm and it needs to penalize everybody who uses the platform. This would be bad.
I would love to hear thoughts from SEO experts on the best way to present links on SteemIt.com so that Google does not penalize the sites to which we link.
TBH I don't really care what Google does. Even Ripoffreports saw the light and volunteered to not spread their smut to Europe knowing that big trouble was coming their way. Why adapt to Google; let Google adapt to us to remain relevant. Google is a very good search engine, but is it still really just a search engine when it determines what has to be part of your content to be counted? Will they penalize YouTube for being linked (a lot) in Steemit? Why not?
I have not used google for years, they are the epitome of "evil" and it is quite ironic how they started out with the expression "do no evil" then turn out to be the evil itself. :-)
Unfortunately most alternative SEs still purchase their search results from the big ones like Google and Bing. I started using Ixquick and then switched to the go go Duck, but haven't done any research into that subject for 2 years since I knew the EU was going to make things tough on them. Now I'm waiting on the fall out to settle. I still pose the question though. Is it just a search engine when they dictate what should be in your publication? That is like a war correspondent reporting events on the beach while the battle takes place in the City.
Is Google evil? That may depend on your perspective. I think they are just greedy. Never mind if the info is accurate; get that money!
They collude with the government to manipulate news, and were caught trying to get Hillary in to the hot seat, so yes, they are evil, and only time will tell, how bad a player they have been.
I use duckduckgo also.
By the way, superb comment.
Thank you.
Even those search engines that don't buy results from Google use similar algorithms. and have problems with duplicate content.
The way that search engines relate to duplicate content is a pertinent issue. Our own celebrity bot @cheetah has the same issue.
The fact that Google used the mantra "do no evil" while creating a search engine that undermined the Internet is a pretty good sign that the company was engaged in "evil."
Google was projecting what it was doing onto other people. Projecting evil onto other people is one of the greatest acts of evil.
There were some companies that specifically created false information to skew Google's results. What Google did was to declare all of the directories that competed against Google to be link farms. They then shadow-banned directories and declared them "evil."
It was an evil act.
Google did have a propensity to favor negative information; potentialprostitutes and ripoffreports were good examples that rose through the rankings at lightning speed. Duplicate content didn't seem to matter, there were some 200 websites listing the same collection of 17.3 million mugshots between 2012 and 2016. The fact that 30% of those folks were exonerated or had the charges against them dropped also did not seem to matter; the first 50 search results were dominated by smutshot websites all listing the exact same information and offered removal for a fee. Those that paid found that the next batch of websites rose to the top to replace the ones that were taken down.
So much for duplicate content rejection :/
All I will add to this story is that I know for a fact that most SEO experts have no clue how that was done, and have no tools to counteract such an attack. Evil? Absolutely! ..but who...
The EU slapped Google with a $2.7 Billion fine for search result manipulation and another $5 Billion fine for pushing their Android Apps. Yeah, that's a "B"
You are completely correct. The googlebot system of shadow-banning sites didn't work.
Google really did nothing more than create a system where they can shadow ban the nice sites. Their search engine can still be gamed by bad actors.
You know, before 2011 they left a copy of their algorithm open for their developers. It's about 8GB and there are still a few copies floating around out there. Of course they can change a few lines of code and everything changes again, but some folks found a way around that. Rather than reverse engineering the algorithm, it's behavior can be measured and changes noted when they happen and reacted to on short order. The only thing a search engine can do about that is shut itself down.
One thing search engines can do is simply de-list unwanted sites; it's 100% effective, but they refused at that time. They do exactly that now that they face some expensive fines.
Anyway, I'm out of that game; I spent enough time on that and I prefer to move on. Hope any info I shared in this thread helps those that need to better understand that these search engines are manipulated by both their owners and outside actors. Greetings!
I started creating community directories in 1999. I still hold on to a few of the geodomains I started with the brand Community Color. The sites have never made money, nor have they been popular.
I hold on to them defiantly because I think people need to support their local communities.
such an interesting choice of topic @yintercept
I also would like to hear more from some SEO experts
It is also a very pertinent subject.
Some people put signatures in their posts. Steemit and our license with SteemIt.com allow people to make copies of this data. Googlebot might see the signatures as link spam.
BTW: Link spam is a problem. There are robots that crawl blogs and forums. They write millions upon millions of fake messages that include links.
I was just wondering @yintercept
Thank you for your prompt reply.
Just a bit off-topic:
Assuming that Steemit Inc would go bankrupt then what may happen? Is steemit just a front-end or more than that? Would steeve.app or steempeak.com also stop working? any idea?
Cheers
Piotr
In theory, the blockchain is independent of its creator and the STEEM blockchain is hosted by independent witnesses.
So, it is possible for SteemIt Inc to fail while the blockchain continues.
Some might see this as desirable.
Of course, hosting the database and bandwidth associated with the blockchain are the primary expenses of the STEEM ecosystem; So, most scenarios that cause SteemIt Inc to fail also cause the collapse of the blockchain.
Interestingly, the failure of SteemIt Inc might actually increase the market value of STEEM as there are people who like completely independent blockchains.
Dear @yintercept
Thank you for all your time and effort. I appreciate that you're sharing your knowledge with me.
Seriously? Why? I wonder what would happened with all STEEM which is being locked on Steemit in form of Steem power.
Would users be able to access their own resources? Any idea?
Isn't the same case with other Dapp or sites which are using STEEM as a currency?
Yours
Piotr