I read Shoemoney’s blog – sometimes he posts some great worthwhile content, but I totally agree there is a line, and he among others is crossing it more and more frequently in my opinion.

I am worried about the knock on effect – I know how many good hackers there are out there who would look on this as fun, and any pocket money just a bonus. I am not talking typical script kiddies

I hold no ill-will towards SEO or SMO experts, and I love me some Digg and some widgets (in fact, in my day-to-day job at a shared web hosting company, we’re trying to implement such tools to reach out to our customers). But the gall of someone who makes his living exploiting the very systems that he then moaned about being banned from takes a whole-nother level of nerve.

I used to read folks like Andy Beal and considered him alongside Danny Sullivan as a much read in the SEO industry, as it was about how the engines work and how to optimize your site to rank well. He’s lost a lot of shine in this mess, as well (for what it’s worth, I agreed with Jeremey Zawodny in their little beef).

What I’m slowly learning, from both the web hosting industry and this field of SEO/SMO is that there’s a distinct and defined line between the dorks and the marketers. It used to be that the two groups had a bit more of a give-take relationship, but lately I feel like the SEO and SMO marketing folks have moved away from optimizing within the scope of the tools (search engines, digg, widgets, or in my industry — overselling) and instead do it at the expense of the users. It’s distasteful. This is just the latest in that linkbaiting trend. Pissing and moaning about being banned from a free tool that you’d spent weeks demeaning is just about the last straw for me.

That was a bit long-winded and probably should have been on my blog, as opposed to your comments, but I appreciate the outlet.