For one thing, they are long, cumbersome, awkward and hard to remember at times. They also tell any web-savvy visitor that you are doing whatever you can to come up on searches – that your goal is traffic and that you’re ‘working the system’ to get it. To people like me at least that is a warning light, a red flag that you might have poor content you are simply trying to dress up with targetted Google-friendly keywords.

There is another thing, though, that a lot of people don’t think about: the prestige of the domain name. A short, quirky and memorable domain is hard to think of and many or most are taken. Anyone can go out and find three generic words to string together (e.g. BlogHomeZone.com or MedicalTreatmentSolutions) but few can find 5 to 8 letter domains that aren’t a jumble of consonants and vowels. In short, when people see a shorter domain name they are cued into the owner’s credibility in one (or all) of three ways:

(1) they can see the owner spent time and thought coming up with a creative name and thus that they have a personal investment in the site

(2) they understand that the owner has paid something for the domain and, as in the point above, that the author consequently has an investment (monetary in this case) that they wish to protect

(3) they realize that the owner has probably had the domain for a long time and thus has already invested considerable time and effort into the site

These kinds of things may not be readily apparent to a new blogger or website developer but that is precisely the point: they are common pitfalls made when people purchase their first domains. Are you stuck with a domain you don’t like? It might be best to learn from it and move on. Still picking one? Think about how tech-savvy individuals will perceive it and let that guide you in your purchase!

[He resposds that he doesn't respond to threats]

Excerpted paragraph from my response:

“According to Wikipedia: “A threat is a declaration of intention to inflict punishment or harm on another.” I have no intention to harm or punish you. However, I adhere to Google’s WebMaster guidelines. If you don’t care about your own position on Google searches and/or your own PageRank, feel free to disregard this message. If you do care, I am notifying you as a favor of my intentions. Feel free to see Google’s WebMaster guidelines for yourself. I’m sorry if you read my tone as confrontational or threatening – I went out of my way to explain that it wasn’t personal and to give you an opportunity to remove/change the content. I realize you had no hostile intentions in reprinting the article, but from Google’s perspective that constitutes a violation – I would otherwise be happy to see the information spread. Feel free to excerpt quotes and an image or two, providing your own introduction and/or conclusion. At this point, I hope you, in turn, will consider taking a kinder tone in your response.”

[He responds with excessive CAPS and repeats that he doesn't respond to threats, also adding that he has 'blacklisted' the site - apparently thinking that I will care that one lousy PR4 site full of plagiarized material isn't linking to a site I write for]

My final response:

[I'll skip over my surprisingly polite first two paragraphs, where I apologize again for misundertandings, etc.... and go straight to the juicy stuff I just couldn't hold back any longer]

“Feel free to not use or link to my sites, as you wish – I certainly do not need links from your site, and would prefer no links at all to links accompanying copied content. As for how much traffic you get in a day: no offense, but Alexa and Technorati are fairly good indicators that you don’t get much. Feel free to compare our relative traffic at Alexa.com. Further, a site as old as yours with only PR4 suggests Google is already wise to your violations of their guidelines. So, if you take nothing else from this, now you (if you’ve been paying attention) know how to stop violating Google’s guidelines and perhaps improve your site in the future. I’m frankly done listening to you rant at me after I tried my best to be polite throughout this conversation.”

So that’s that folks … now don’t get me wrong: normally I rant and rant and rant when someone pisses me off, but this guy is clearly [DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVE REMOVED UPON REQUEST OF THE ANONYMOUS PARTY DESCRIBED LOL]! I’m really not sure I could handle a real-life stalker if it came to that, so I left it at a few geeky insults about his inability to become internet famous.

What I find particularly interesting is that she is starting from absolute scratch and documenting the entire process. Many bloggers who are newer to the game talk big but are easily revealed if they are only not truly knowledgable.  This blogger actually (almost scientifically) describes each and every step along the way. Somehow, I find both the specificity of the blog’s content and the honesty of its author quite refreshing in a blogosphere full of blogs about making money.

In the interest of full disclosure: this blogger actually write a review of Allsux.com that (both for its depth and honesty) will earn the blog multiple incoming links! However, this post reflects my own opinions of that blog, and these multiple links are freely given. Fascinating endeavor, look forward to tracking it (ouch did I really just make that pun?).

In return, I will write a post linking back to everyone who reviews this site with a short blurb about the site and its content. Bonus: it’s a fair bet (based on traffic, such as the recent 16,000+ hits from the Fark main page) that this site is actually PR5 in disguise, it just doesn’t show yet because we are pre-update. So, you’ve got a PR4 or maybe even a PR5 link – just for writing your mind! Don’t like the site? Feel free to trash it. Not sure where to start? Here is a handful of some of our most viewed and controversial posts.

Extra extra bonus: One lucky winner will get a second free blogroll link from a site that already has PR5 showing on it. This will go to the person with the most creative, interesting or funny post – whether or not it trashes or praises this site!

(5) This post about Ask, Google and Google-Sux got some attention mostly because I bashed a site, and its administrator came back at me guns blazing. However, their counterarguments got shut down pretty fast. In reality, I think it was the comments that drew more attention than the post.

(4) This post about the huge scandal about LiveLeak not being indexed by Google drew a lot of readership, though much of it was from a Spanish site I never was able to decipher!

(3) Of course, one of the biggest AllSux targets has been Digg.com – and this story that followed the huge Digg scandal was the most popular of them all. While other blogs (and major news sites like Wired) were confused, I stayed up all night and summarized what was going on.

(2) The Technorati experiment had a huge readership. I think that a lot of people are interested in the deeper consequences of using social networks, and this post struck a cord with folks.

(1) Of course the most visited page on AllSux is Allsux! That bodes well for this and my other (newer) blog, because it means that there are a lot of readers who want to see the lates and greatest, and don’t just show up to read a single post and leave. Thanks to you all – keep visiting, reading, and please leave comments! Also visit this new blog I’m helping develop: WebUrbanist.com.

An honorable mention goes to all of the articles on AllSux about Helium. Though none of these pages have individually made the top five, they have cumulatively done amazingly well. Why? Because other frustrated Helium writers keep finding them and sending me words of support as well as their own stories bout Helium.

I’ve been stuck with the same Google Analytics result for over 14 hours now - yet my backup tool (MyBlogLog) has been showing tons of hits since Analytics stopped counting. What’s going on? This is by far the longest I’ve ever seen Analytics go down for, wonder what the holdup is.

Update: indeed, my tracking went down for over a 12-hour period and, 24 hours after this all started, Google suddenly dumped all of the missing data back into my tracking account. Meanwhile, another blogger I know is having issues getting into his Adsense account. Strange.

The top search result for Google Censors Liveleak is still this misleading out-of-date video. Why don’t they remove it? Update it? Write a follow-up and link to it prominently near that video? LiveLeak is, in my opinion, still cashing in on the residual PR value of being unlisted by Google, to the point of misleading people who seek the full story.