The fact is, Mahalo links to affiliate sites. It links to sites that have no content above the fold. The guides overlook dead links when editing. In areas where I am familiar with the subject, the links are rather uninspired.

So, many of the Mahalo problems people predict will someday occur (due to lack of scalability) exist right now.

Yes, Google can have shortcomings, but Mahalo as currently implemented is not the solution for search.

Will other social networks someday beat Google for search? Well, maybe. But someone needs to figure out how to tap the correct social network for the correct information. If you need to find good knitting links & advice, find a knitting social network. (And you need to be sure that group doesn’t get polluted by avid promoters who live to nominate their friends stuff.)

If a knit store owner wants good SEO information, tapping her social network isn’t going to do much good. That person needs to break out.

Figuring out how to make the social networks become wonderful for search while then insulating them from gaming is going to be difficult!

Oh.. this is rambling. I should follow my own advice and figure out what I really mean to say and write a blog post tomorrow! :)

Your “Bobrank” doesn’t work because it doesn’t cover topical authority in any way. Once it does you get closer to Google search algorithms. Add a little natural language processing and you get a little closer still.

Mahalo already contains links to affiliate sites.

Facebook you have to work hard to build up a sphere of connections, and then you have to be willing to read their chatter as well. The more contacts you add, the more problems with noise.

Techmeme as can be seen by their very narrow coverage – if I can’t get on there for a topic so closely related to my blog which is both web2.0 and SEO related, I am not sure how less linked to bloggers ever will.

I can actually get in Robert Scoble’s linkblog easier than on Techmeme.

Also if you force people to log in to comment, they just won’t comment. I refuse to create a new WordPress.com account in a different name after being banned for beta testing during the beta test.

The Social Graph or Trust Fabric is not the same as Page Rank because it is not as accessible or as easily manipulated as Page Rank. See my post on how Yahoo could create an open Social Network of Search Engines for more on why:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/social-graph-search-engines-part-3/

Scoble is on to a powerful concept. I’ve experienced it first hand and changed my search habits in a way everyone can do:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/stop-googling-and-search-for-blogs-aka-web-20-to-reduce-spam/

Just searching blogs instead of Googling is still vulnerable to SEO strategies, but try living with it for a short while and you’ll see how helpful it is to escape the SEO’s at least for a brief respite.

Cheers!

BW

Keep on blogging :)

[moderated: unfortunately my site cannot be USED for you to optimize your own, though you could certainly use my information to learn something beyond comment spamming for SEO. Link deleted]

Why they are they so affraid of SEO?

I think Robert is wrong on this one