I am still on the list also.

Cheers,
Tom
www.tomcosgrave.com

John McCormac wrote:
>
> On Sat, 31 Jan 2009, Michele Neylon wrote:
>
>> Is there anyone left on this list? Or has it died?
>
> I don't think there has been much traffic recently. The Blog Buzz seems
> sooo 2005 now. :)
>
> Regards...jmcc

Guess everyone's over on twitter and facebook :)


--
Mr Michele Neylon
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009, Michele Neylon wrote:

> Is there anyone left on this list? Or has it died?

I don't think there has been much traffic recently. The Blog Buzz seems
sooo 2005 now. :)

Regards...jmcc

Is there anyone left on this list? Or has it died?

--
Mr Michele Neylon
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/

Cork will play host to the 5th International Conference on Social
Software - BlogTalk - from the 2nd to the 4th of March 2008.

The BlogTalk event - see http://2008.blogtalk.net - allows
practitioners, developers and academics to connect and discuss the
latest trends and happenings in the world of social software (blogs,
wikis, social networks, etc.). A workshop on the hot topic of "Social
Network Portability" will be co-located with the event.

BlogTalk has attracted prominent speakers in the past, and this year is
no exception. The conference will feature three keynote speakers from
Silicon Valley talking about their Web 2.0 experiences and future plans
for the emerging "Web 3.0":

* Nova Spivack- CEO, Radar Networks - Nova is the entrepreneur behind
the Twine "knowledge networking" application, which allows users to
share, organise, and find information with people they trust. He is a
leading voice of the Semantic Web or Web 3.0. Nova co-founded EarthWeb
in 1994, which led to the first big tech IPO. He will talk about
semantic social software for consumers.
* Rashmi Sinha - Founder, Uzanto - Rashmi is a designer, researcher and
entrepreneur in the area of user experience and interactions with web
technology. She led the team that produced SlideShare.net, a popular
presentation-sharing service that some have dubbed "YouTube for
PowerPoint". Rashmi will talk about lessons learned from designing
social software applications.
* Salim Ismail - Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo! - Salim is a successful
investor and entrepreneur, with expertise in a variety of early-stage
startups and Web 2.0 companies including the conference directory
service Confabb and blog feed collector PubSub. He currently leads
Yahoo!'s internal start-up think tank. Salim will talk about
entrepreneurship and social media.

Other presenters, panellists and confirmed attendees at the event
include: hypertext pioneer Mark Bernstein; the CTO of SUP-LiveJournal
Sergei Komarov (one of the world's largest blogging services); and
"Mobile Web 2.0" expert and consultant Ajit Jaokar. Topics to be
discussed include the impact of social media on politics (and vice
versa); the use of social networks and blogs in corporate environments;
mobile internet solutions for education; issues to be aware of now that
anybody can design and produce social media; the "long tail" effect from
having multiple online identities; and blogs about dieting.

Co-located with BlogTalk will be a workshop on "Social Network
Portability". Nowadays, people have accounts on a variety of social
networking sites. However, many users are experiencing problems when
they register for a new site: they don't want to re-enter their personal
profiles from scratch, and they want to be able to easily discover their
existing friends from previously-used social networking services.
There's a real need to be able to port profiles and social relationships
(i.e., whom we are in touch with on a particular site) across various
services. This workshop will discuss how we can solve this need by
making both social network profiles and associated data portable.

The event is being sponsored by Microsoft, the Digital Enterprise
Research Institute at NUI Galway and BT. Places are limited to 200, so
those interested in attending should signup as soon as possible.

For further information:

Web: http://2008.blogtalk.net

E-mail: blogtalk2008@...

Contact: John Breslin, DERI, NUI Galway

Phone: 091-495134

= Invited speakers =

== Keynote Talks ==

* Entrepreneurship and social media - Salim Ismail, Head of Brickhouse,
Yahoo!
* Lessons learned from designing social software - Rashmi Sinha,
Founder, Uzanto (SlideShare, MindCanvas)
* Semantic social software: the Semantic Web for consumers - Nova
Spivack, Founder and CEO, Radar Networks (Twine)

== Invited Panels ==

* Mashups, microformats and the mobile web - Sean McGrath, CTO,
Propylon; Bill de hÓra, Engineer, NewBay; Conor O'Neill, Founder,
Argolon Solutions (LouderVoice)
* From blog-style commentary to conversational social media - Stephanie
Booth, Consultant, Climb to the Stars; Matt Colebourne, CEO, coComment;
Donncha O Caoimh, Developer, Automattic Inc. (WordPress.com)

== Workshop Keynotes ==

* Privacy and revocation, two sides of the same coin: using Google Open
Social APIs to illustrate a new privacy model for the social web - Ajit
Jaokar, Founder and CEO, Futuretext
* Stuff I've been thinking about lately - Dan Brickley, Co-Founder,
Friend-of-a-Friend Project and Programmer, Joost

--- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, John Breslin <john.breslin@...>
wrote:
>
> FYI
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:  Galway opencoffee club 2
> Date:  Wed, 1 Aug 2007 17:55:44 +0100
> From:  Aidan Finn <aidan@...>
> To:
>
>
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> David Lenehan of Polldaddy(http://polldaddy.com/) and
Read/Writeweb
> (http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_david.php) is in Galway on
Friday.
> I'll be meeting up with him and we thought this would be a good
> opportunity to have the second Galway Opencoffee club. We've
> provisionally arranged Friday at 11 in the Forster Court. Let me
know
> if you're interested. Please pass on this info to anyone you
think
> might be interested.
>
> There is an upcoming event at
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/226830
> and I blogged about it at http://www.aidanf.net/blog/2007/08/01/
> galway-opencoffee-club-friday
>
> Cheers,
>
> Aidan
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. John Breslin
> DERI, NUI Galway
> http://sw.deri.org/~jbreslin/
> john.breslin@...

   Hi !

   Thank You for the notification and the invite , but I will not be
able to make it . I will be stuck in Dublin at that time , although
I would love to be in a position to visit Galway - that event would
be an ideal 'working holiday' !

Thanks again ,

Sharon.
>

Hi,

I wonder if someone at the Galway OpenCoffee event
would kindly post two or three comments here:

http://www.jaiku.com/channel/irishopencoffee

You can text in your comments and they will drop onto
a dozen phone screens for cross-tell.

regards
Bernie

John Breslin wrote:
> FYI

So this list is still semi-alive?

On a sidenote, we're sponsoring a talk on Firefox down in Cork next week:

http://blog.blacknight.ie/firefox_talk_in_cork.html

Regards

Michele

--
Michele Neylon
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/
http://www.movieforums.eu/
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/

FYI

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:  Galway opencoffee club 2
Date:  Wed, 1 Aug 2007 17:55:44 +0100
From:  Aidan Finn <aidan@...>
To:



Hi Folks,

David Lenehan of Polldaddy(http://polldaddy.com/) and Read/Writeweb
(http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_david.php) is in Galway on Friday.
I'll be meeting up with him and we thought this would be a good
opportunity to have the second Galway Opencoffee club. We've
provisionally arranged Friday at 11 in the Forster Court. Let me know
if you're interested. Please pass on this info to anyone you think
might be interested.

There is an upcoming event at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/226830
and I blogged about it at http://www.aidanf.net/blog/2007/08/01/
galway-opencoffee-club-friday

Cheers,

Aidan



--
Dr. John Breslin
DERI, NUI Galway
http://sw.deri.org/~jbreslin/
john.breslin@...

John McCormac wrote:

>
> Sometimes I wonder if Technorati is all it claims to be. Losing blogs
> like this irritates a lot of people.

You get what you pay for :)

Mick wrote:
> I find it de-registers Slugger when they go for a re-fit. I've
> registered now, but for a few weeks although it had Slugger's detail it
> was telling me that it didn't exist...

Sometimes I wonder if Technorati is all it claims to be. Losing blogs
like this irritates a lot of people.

Regards...jmcc
blog.whoisireland.com

John McCormac wrote:
> I've indexed approximately 80% of .eu domains. Eurid does not give
> access to the zonefile (the big list of registered .eu domains) so I
> had to use some cryptographic techniques to do it. The strange thing
> is that the only identifiable new sites in .eu appear to be blogs. No
> companies seem to want to use .eu as a primary domain. Is anyone on
> the list using .eu for blogs?
>

I've a couple of .eu blogs:

http://www.techietoys.eu

http://www.broadbandwatch.eu

http://www.isquattedyour.eu

Michele

John McCormac wrote:
> Is anyone having problems with getting Technorati to update their
> site data? They seem to think that my blog was updated 39 days ago
> and others seem to be having similar problems.
>

No problems with any of my blogs here

I've indexed approximately 80% of .eu domains. Eurid does not give
access to the zonefile (the big list of registered .eu domains) so I had
to use some cryptographic techniques to do it. The strange thing is that
the only identifiable new sites in .eu appear to be blogs. No companies
seem to want to use .eu as a primary domain. Is anyone on the list using
.eu for blogs?

Regards...jmcc
http://blog.whoisireland.com

Is anyone having problems with getting Technorati to update their site
data? They seem to think that my blog was updated 39 days ago and others
seem to be having similar problems.

Regards...jmcc
http://blog.whoisireland.com

John Breslin wrote:
> I don't know if any of you people use IRC but what about frequenting
> the #irishblogs channel on irc.freenode.net?
I'm on IRC most of the time ....

Michele
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/
http://www.searchenginecookbook.com/
http://www.irishblogs.info - top Irish blogs/bloggers

I don't know if any of you people use IRC but what about frequenting the
#irishblogs channel on irc.freenode.net?

Freenode is a good server for bloggers, with #wordpress and #joiito
channels.

Talk soon,

John.
--
Fence wrote:
> On 8/7/06, Conn Ó Muíneacháin <imeall@...> wrote:
>
>> --- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, Michele Neylon <michele@...> wrote:
>>  > Is this list still active?
>>  It is now!  :-D
>>
>
> You beat me to it. ;)
>
> Fence
>
>


--
Dr. John Breslin
DERI, NUI Galway
http://sw.deri.org/~jbreslin/
john.breslin@...

On 8/7/06, Conn Ó Muíneacháin <imeall@...> wrote:
>
> --- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, Michele Neylon <michele@...> wrote:
>  > Is this list still active?
>  It is now!  :-D

You beat me to it. ;)

Fence

--
"Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat
in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the
turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall
down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home."

http://www.prettycunning.net/blog

--- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, Michele Neylon <michele@...> wrote:
> Is this list still active?

It is now!  :-D

Is this list still active?
--
http://www.mneylon.com/blog
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/
http://www.armchair.ie/

Hi Dermod,

That backlink that you received occured from content which is no
longer displayed and which was indexed by Google/blogger before we
made initial changes- so it would not appear even if we did not make
further changes. We are still working on the old cahced page.  One of
the complicating factors is that we were allowing comments where the
blog owner chose to allow comments.  While this feature is rarely used
we didn't want to throw it out just yet.  Here's what were going to do
with the old cached page: We're going to leave a link there to the
original post on the blog owners blog - in case the post is still
indexed in the search engines- but not show any of the post
content(i.e. no excerpt).  If the post has the comments option turned
"off" (default option) then the page will display the robots meta tag
"noindex, follow".  If the comments are turned on then the post and
comments will appear with no robots meta tag.

Overtime that page will disappear from any search engine - as there
will be no link to it (unless the blog owner has elected to turn
comments "on") - we've removed the "previous post" and "later post"
links from the template also.

As regards Page Rank, it is not known (despite speculation) whether
Google distributes Page Rank to pages that are linked from pages
marked "noindex".  If it is the case that it doesn't pass on page rank
- then using the robots meta tag will result in lost page rank to the
bloggers' blogs.  This will only be a temporary effect as over time
the page rank of that page will be zero as no pages will link to it.

As regards more communications and our irishblogs.ie blog - sorry
about the paucity of posts - but the issue is one of being stretched
thin on the ground and lack of time, with only few of us running <a
href="http://www.blogsome.com/">Blogsome</a> (with over 60,000 blogs),
making changes to <a href="http://www.irishblogs.ie">irishblogs.ie</a>
and developing our new Irish search engine, <a
href'"http:/www.scrudu.ie/news/">Scrúdú</a> (shameless plug ;)) not to
mention the recent arrival of a most beautiful baby daughter, Mia.

Regards,
Roger

--- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, "Bootboy" <bootboy@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Roger,
>
> I thought that you had changed things, but at
http://bonhom.ie/2006/05/parody-pastiche-or-real-thing.html at the
bottom there is a backlink pointing to a post of mine today - (as I've
said before, backlinks being Google Searches) - and it still points to
an Irish Blogs cache of my post, not to my original post, at
http://www.irishblogs.ie/post/parody-pastiche-or-the-real-thing%E2%84%A2-part-2
.
>
> Surely, you have to add "noindex, follow" in a robots meta header on
your individual post page, or it will get indexed by Google as soon as
it appears. Just adding the words "We currently only store excerpts.
To see the full post please click on the title." is not enough. The
reader shouldn't get to see that page in the first place, as it should
not be indexed as an individual item. Maybe you haven't got around to
it yet?
>
> Best wishes
>
> Dermod
> --
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: roger_galligan
>   To: irishblogs@yahoogroups.com
>   Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 10:55 PM
>   Subject: [irishblogs] Re: New poll for irishblogs
>
>
>   I agree with Dermod.  I was never very happy with having the cache
>   copy.  We put it there at the time probably for 2 reasons.  Firstly it
>   seemed to be what other aggregators were doing and secondly because we
>   could.  Both pretty bad reasons to do anything.  We put the link to it
>   in a very pale grey - which we thought we serve to decrease the link
>   value for it.  Rather than put noindex, follow - I think we should get
>   rid of it altogether.
>
>   I haven't noticed the cached copy do too well in Google, usually it's
>   the category or similar post page that comes up, and if the cached
>   copy is listed is usually together with the clustered content and
>   would likely not have appeared in that position were it not for the
>   clustered content.
>
>   e.g:
>
http://www.google.ie/search?num=100&hl=en&q=rte%20blog%20dunphy&btnG=Search&meta\
=cr%3DcountryIE
>
>   However I can understand how seeing the cached copy of your post ahead
>   of your own copy could be annoying.
>
>   Google loves to get clustered content.  Any clustering algorithm is
>   the flip side of a search algorithm.  So category pages and similar-to
>   pages are likely to contain more of the related terms to subject
>   matter at hand than the individual post.
>
>   I would say that 95% of the outbound Page Rank goes back to the
>   bloggers (many Irish Bloggers have said to me that we are one of their
>   top referrers after Google which also suggests that people are getting
>   their directly from Google). Pretty much every outbound link from the
>   site is to a blogger apart from the sponsors (by the way the
>   "sponsors" do not pay us a cent - these are projects that we take time
>   out of, to do IrishBlogs.ie and we still pay Servecentric for our
>   hosting but we appreciate the deal they have given us).  We're going
>   to change the sponsors java drop down closed so you'll have to click
>   on it to see them - we still have some tidy-up work to do on the
>   righthand sidebar, particulary the new "The Buzz" section. I don't
>   think we'll ever recoup the investment we've made in Irishblogs.ie
>   although one day we may make something out of the learning and
>   technology behind it, and we do enjoy working on it.
>
>   I think the performance of the category pages and similar post pages
>   in Google helps bloggers v. other media.  In the example above we
>   irishblogs appears above RTE and Unison.  I think this is bringing
>   bloggers voices to the attention of internet users at the expense of
>   mainstream media, which of course is a good thing.  I think that
>   IrishBlogs.ie has helped to raise the profile of Irish Bloggers.
>
>   I for one will be voting for Dermod's proposal and I'd go further - I
>   don't think we should even keep a cached copy of the full post.
>   (Likewise I don't think Google should have a "cache" option on their
>   SERP's).
>
>   I have another question:
>   If we put Google ads or some other advertising in order to cover some
>   of our costs would this upset anybody or what are people's views
on this?
>
>   ...and thanks Dermod for voting for us at the awards.
>
>   Regards,
>   Roger
>
>
>   --- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, irishblogs@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>   >
>   >
>   > Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
>   > irishblogs group:
>   >
>   > Should <a href="http://irishblogs.ie">irishblogs.ie</a> stop
>   allowing search engines to index their caches of individual posts of
>   contributory blogs?
>   >
>   > As I wrote in <a
>
href="http://bonhom.ie/2006/05/irish-blogs-indexing-our-feeds.html">this
>   post</a>, irishblogs.ie does not, at the moment, have the standard
>   search robots setting of "noindex, follow". This means that it is,
>   increasingly, taking traffic away from contributing blogs. Because
>   search engines hate duplicates, if a search results page has two
>   instances of a blog post, one will not be shown. Increasingly, the one
>   that is displayed is the cached post at irishblogs.ie, as
>   irishblogs.ie has greater authority/pagerank than most of its
>   contributing blogs. This effectively means that irisbhlogs.ie is
>   stealing the traffic of individual bloggers. People can read my words
>   and yet irishblogs.ie gets the hit, the advertising exposure, the
>   increase in pageranking (over time), and the opportunity to invite the
>   reader to click elsewhere on their site. That reader should, by
>   rights, be at my blog.
>   >
>   > The only time an aggregator should allow indexing of what it creates
>   is at category pages, ie a page devoted to all the posts with the
>   keyword "politics" for example. It deserves to get indexed by search
>   engines because that is what aggregators are best at: to gather
>   various posts together, creating original content. So a search for
>   "irish politics" should return the irishblogs.ie "politics" tag page,
>   and a valuable resource that is too. But it should not return any
>   individual Irish blog post that mentions politics, at anything other
>   than the source URL. Duplicating a blog post is not creating original
>   content, and it should not be allowed to be indexed.
>   >
>   > I am calling for irishblogs.ie to account for their policy, and come
>   up with a clearly worded Terms of Service for all to read that
>   explains their indexing policy. Irishblogs.ie is a powerful, popular
>   force in Irish blogging, and with power comes responsibility.
>   >
>   > Dermod
>   >
>   >   o Yes, irishblogs.ie should change its setting for cached single
>   posts to "noindex, follow"
>   >   o No, it's fine as it is
>   >
>   >
>   > To vote, please visit the following web page:
>   > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/irishblogs/surveys?id=2228497
>   >
>   > Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
>   > not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
>   > web site listed above.
>   >
>   > Thanks!
>   >
>
>
>
>
>
>   SPONSORED LINKS Computer internet security  Computer internet
business  Computer internet access
>         Computer internet privacy securities  Computer internet help
  Computer internet connection
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
>
>     a..  Visit your group "irishblogs" on the web.
>
>     b..  To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>      irishblogs-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>     c..  Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of
Service.
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>   __________ NOD32 1.1536 (20060513) Information __________
>
>   This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
>   http://www.eset.com
>

----- Original Message -----

From: roger_galligan

To: irishblogs@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 10:55 PM

Subject: [irishblogs] Re: New poll for irishblogs

I agree with Dermod.  I was never very happy with having the cache
copy.  We put it there at the time probably for 2 reasons.  Firstly it
seemed to be what other aggregators were doing and secondly because we
could.  Both pretty bad reasons to do anything.  We put the link to it
in a very pale grey - which we thought we serve to decrease the link
value for it.  Rather than put noindex, follow - I think we should get
rid of it altogether.

I haven't noticed the cached copy do too well in Google, usually it's
the category or similar post page that comes up, and if the cached
copy is listed is usually together with the clustered content and
would likely not have appeared in that position were it not for the
clustered content.

e.g:
http://www.google.ie/search?num=100&hl=en&q=rte%20blog%20dunphy&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryIE

However I can understand how seeing the cached copy of your post ahead
of your own copy could be annoying.

Google loves to get clustered content.  Any clustering algorithm is
the flip side of a search algorithm.  So category pages and similar-to
pages are likely to contain more of the related terms to subject
matter at hand than the individual post.

I would say that 95% of the outbound Page Rank goes back to the
bloggers (many Irish Bloggers have said to me that we are one of their
top referrers after Google which also suggests that people are getting
their directly from Google). Pretty much every outbound link from the
site is to a blogger apart from the sponsors (by the way the
"sponsors" do not pay us a cent - these are projects that we take time
out of, to do IrishBlogs.ie and we still pay Servecentric for our
hosting but we appreciate the deal they have given us).  We're going
to change the sponsors java drop down closed so you'll have to click
on it to see them - we still have some tidy-up work to do on the
righthand sidebar, particulary the new "The Buzz" section. I don't
think we'll ever recoup the investment we've made in Irishblogs.ie
although one day we may make something out of the learning and
technology behind it, and we do enjoy working on it.

I think the performance of the category pages and similar post pages
in Google helps bloggers v. other media.  In the example above we
irishblogs appears above RTE and Unison.  I think this is bringing
bloggers voices to the attention of internet users at the expense of
mainstream media, which of course is a good thing.  I think that
IrishBlogs.ie has helped to raise the profile of Irish Bloggers.

I for one will be voting for Dermod's proposal and I'd go further - I
don't think we should even keep a cached copy of the full post.
(Likewise I don't think Google should have a "cache" option on their
SERP's).

I have another question:
If we put Google ads or some other advertising in order to cover some
of our costs would this upset anybody or what are people's views on this?

...and thanks Dermod for voting for us at the awards.

Regards,
Roger


--- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, irishblogs@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
>
> Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
> irishblogs group:
>
> Should <a href="http://irishblogs.ie">irishblogs.ie</a> stop
allowing search engines to index their caches of individual posts of
contributory blogs?
>
> As I wrote in <a
href="http://bonhom.ie/2006/05/irish-blogs-indexing-our-feeds.html">this
post</a>, irishblogs.ie does not, at the moment, have the standard
search robots setting of "noindex, follow". This means that it is,
increasingly, taking traffic away from contributing blogs. Because
search engines hate duplicates, if a search results page has two
instances of a blog post, one will not be shown. Increasingly, the one
that is displayed is the cached post at irishblogs.ie, as
irishblogs.ie has greater authority/pagerank than most of its
contributing blogs. This effectively means that irisbhlogs.ie is
stealing the traffic of individual bloggers. People can read my words
and yet irishblogs.ie gets the hit, the advertising exposure, the
increase in pageranking (over time), and the opportunity to invite the
reader to click elsewhere on their site. That reader should, by
rights, be at my blog.
>
> The only time an aggregator should allow indexing of what it creates
is at category pages, ie a page devoted to all the posts with the
keyword "politics" for example. It deserves to get indexed by search
engines because that is what aggregators are best at: to gather
various posts together, creating original content. So a search for
"irish politics" should return the irishblogs.ie "politics" tag page,
and a valuable resource that is too. But it should not return any
individual Irish blog post that mentions politics, at anything other
than the source URL. Duplicating a blog post is not creating original
content, and it should not be allowed to be indexed.
>
> I am calling for irishblogs.ie to account for their policy, and come
up with a clearly worded Terms of Service for all to read that
explains their indexing policy. Irishblogs.ie is a powerful, popular
force in Irish blogging, and with power comes responsibility.
>
> Dermod
>
>   o Yes, irishblogs.ie should change its setting for cached single
posts to "noindex, follow"
>   o No, it's fine as it is
>
>
> To vote, please visit the following web page:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/irishblogs/surveys?id=2228497
>
> Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
> not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
> web site listed above.
>
> Thanks!
>





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----- Original Message -----

From: roger_galligan

To: irishblogs@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 10:55 PM

Subject: [irishblogs] Re: New poll for irishblogs

I agree with Dermod.  I was never very happy with having the cache
copy.  We put it there at the time probably for 2 reasons.  Firstly it
seemed to be what other aggregators were doing and secondly because we
could.  Both pretty bad reasons to do anything.  We put the link to it
in a very pale grey - which we thought we serve to decrease the link
value for it.  Rather than put noindex, follow - I think we should get
rid of it altogether.

I haven't noticed the cached copy do too well in Google, usually it's
the category or similar post page that comes up, and if the cached
copy is listed is usually together with the clustered content and
would likely not have appeared in that position were it not for the
clustered content.

e.g:
http://www.google.ie/search?num=100&hl=en&q=rte%20blog%20dunphy&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryIE

However I can understand how seeing the cached copy of your post ahead
of your own copy could be annoying.

Google loves to get clustered content.  Any clustering algorithm is
the flip side of a search algorithm.  So category pages and similar-to
pages are likely to contain more of the related terms to subject
matter at hand than the individual post.

I would say that 95% of the outbound Page Rank goes back to the
bloggers (many Irish Bloggers have said to me that we are one of their
top referrers after Google which also suggests that people are getting
their directly from Google). Pretty much every outbound link from the
site is to a blogger apart from the sponsors (by the way the
"sponsors" do not pay us a cent - these are projects that we take time
out of, to do IrishBlogs.ie and we still pay Servecentric for our
hosting but we appreciate the deal they have given us).  We're going
to change the sponsors java drop down closed so you'll have to click
on it to see them - we still have some tidy-up work to do on the
righthand sidebar, particulary the new "The Buzz" section. I don't
think we'll ever recoup the investment we've made in Irishblogs.ie
although one day we may make something out of the learning and
technology behind it, and we do enjoy working on it.

I think the performance of the category pages and similar post pages
in Google helps bloggers v. other media.  In the example above we
irishblogs appears above RTE and Unison.  I think this is bringing
bloggers voices to the attention of internet users at the expense of
mainstream media, which of course is a good thing.  I think that
IrishBlogs.ie has helped to raise the profile of Irish Bloggers.

I for one will be voting for Dermod's proposal and I'd go further - I
don't think we should even keep a cached copy of the full post.
(Likewise I don't think Google should have a "cache" option on their
SERP's).

I have another question:
If we put Google ads or some other advertising in order to cover some
of our costs would this upset anybody or what are people's views on this?

...and thanks Dermod for voting for us at the awards.

Regards,
Roger


--- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, irishblogs@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
>
> Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
> irishblogs group:
>
> Should <a href="http://irishblogs.ie">irishblogs.ie</a> stop
allowing search engines to index their caches of individual posts of
contributory blogs?
>
> As I wrote in <a
href="http://bonhom.ie/2006/05/irish-blogs-indexing-our-feeds.html">this
post</a>, irishblogs.ie does not, at the moment, have the standard
search robots setting of "noindex, follow". This means that it is,
increasingly, taking traffic away from contributing blogs. Because
search engines hate duplicates, if a search results page has two
instances of a blog post, one will not be shown. Increasingly, the one
that is displayed is the cached post at irishblogs.ie, as
irishblogs.ie has greater authority/pagerank than most of its
contributing blogs. This effectively means that irisbhlogs.ie is
stealing the traffic of individual bloggers. People can read my words
and yet irishblogs.ie gets the hit, the advertising exposure, the
increase in pageranking (over time), and the opportunity to invite the
reader to click elsewhere on their site. That reader should, by
rights, be at my blog.
>
> The only time an aggregator should allow indexing of what it creates
is at category pages, ie a page devoted to all the posts with the
keyword "politics" for example. It deserves to get indexed by search
engines because that is what aggregators are best at: to gather
various posts together, creating original content. So a search for
"irish politics" should return the irishblogs.ie "politics" tag page,
and a valuable resource that is too. But it should not return any
individual Irish blog post that mentions politics, at anything other
than the source URL. Duplicating a blog post is not creating original
content, and it should not be allowed to be indexed.
>
> I am calling for irishblogs.ie to account for their policy, and come
up with a clearly worded Terms of Service for all to read that
explains their indexing policy. Irishblogs.ie is a powerful, popular
force in Irish blogging, and with power comes responsibility.
>
> Dermod
>
>   o Yes, irishblogs.ie should change its setting for cached single
posts to "noindex, follow"
>   o No, it's fine as it is
>
>
> To vote, please visit the following web page:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/irishblogs/surveys?id=2228497
>
> Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
> not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
> web site listed above.
>
> Thanks!
>





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roger_galligan wrote:
> I have another question:
> If we put Google ads or some other advertising in order to cover some
> of our costs would this upset anybody or what are people's views on this?

I presume you mean on the site?
I don't see any issue with that - makes perfect sense to me
Apart from Adsense there are plenty of other revenue opportunities out
there that pay reasonably well (see http://url.ie/19v for example)

Michele

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