This would indeed be excellent dig bait! Especially if it was a list ;)

But now I find content from other places. For instance, I find most of my content via social services – overwhelming majority being from my RSS reader. This is the new content related to topics that I’m interested in (Gadgets, Web 2.0, Huntsville, politics, etc.). Stuff that I like and want to know more about. This info generally
comes from weblogs. And is very fresh to the web – literally just published to the web.

I also find new content through Reddit and Digg (yuck). This content is usually stuff that would otherwise be off my radar yet is interesting (viral videos, techmeme’s, odd news, etc.). This content is a mix of fresh and old content (BTW: most of the old content on these kinds of sites are static. Also, a large percentage of it is media — digital images or archive data).

Most all of that content (from my RSS reader or social aggregating sites like Reddit or Digg) comes to me automatically. That is, I tell iGoogle, Google Reader, or my personal aggregators to bring that content to me. In the case of Reddit or Digg, someone else (the social community) does the work for me, links to the story, and then I’ll eventually find it.

Still, most all of that content recently created - very fresh to the web.

Here’s my point:

When I actively go out and search for new content, I try to consider the age of the content in which I’m searching. That will give me a clue as to where to go to look for the most accurate result and for the most informative result.

If I think something is not fresh the web (I don’t know, maybe over 12 months old), I’ll almost exclusively use Google to try to locate my information.

But it is something that is fresh to the web or if it is something that I think may have at one time made it “big” on a popular community driven site (like del.icio.us or Reddit), I may try to go back to those sites to find the new content versus going through Google.

So, I think web content creators should consider WHEN they want people to discover their content – not just HOW. I think we all know what link bait is. We know that some articles are written just to get on Digg or Reddit or social media sites.

Look at Smashing Magazine. Their articles are really informative and creative. But, they are surfing on the Digg wave and the “fresh web”. Are their stories really going to be that relevant years from now? Since their content deals with the web today, I doubt they will consider how much the web changes in just a few years. You go to Smashing to learn about the web today.

I think in some cases, we should consider writing for prosperity. But, we’ll have to put faith in Google and the major search engines to not discriminate against the age of content (BTW: look at all the great blogs that have date stamps in their URI). If Google and Yahoo! start experimenting with blog results in the SERPs and social media links (like Yahoo! is doing with del.icio.us in their SERPs) does this dilute the PageRank that old content has the web?

I’m still processing all this.

Quick. Let’s write a thesis on this. It might make it on Digg!

I’m with you on the linkware, when I have done stuff like that I always make the link optional. I’m working on some free themes for WP now and will be making them linkware, but it will be optional and I’ll include the nofollow on my link, just in case.

It’s almost like we can only link inside a post, but we know that’s the easiest place to hide a paid link. TLA is moving more and more towards those kinds of links, as are other publishers.

as for the linkware, what I do is include my link in themes I release, but they can remove them. I only put them in there (Theme provided by….). I figure some people might leave them in. On the plugins though, I haven’t included a link.

I do wonder though what comes next, will we get penalized for having blog rolls? Even if we think they are quality and relevant sites?

From a user POV, having choices is also a good thing. Obviously things like del.icious, ma.gnolia, facebook, twitter, etc. have a higher concentration of power users and are used less by the mainstream population of the internet. However, those things become more accessible to everyone with each passing day. I’ve always been the “right tool for the right job” kind of person. Google doesn’t always give me what I want as I’m doing research. For news, nothing beats the meta sites (digg, netscape, reddit, etc.) or even plain old rss feeds. As a user I like having an option that suits the needs of what I’m trying to do. Google is still my favorite in terms of raw search power. The only time I’ve done a search on MSN or Yahoo is to compare results for SEO work. That said, both MSN and Yahoo have a big following. Granted no one currently comes close to Google. From a pure user stand point, I don’t think there is a viable replacement, though there are plenty of good supplemental tools. One day, maybe. But Google owns search right now. Hell, they term “google it” is becoming like kleenex for tissue and coke for soda. It’s now a verb for looking up something on a search engine. I wonder of Google had that in mind when they were coming up with names.

This would be a good discussion at sxsw!

I guess the bigger question is, should the folks who work on the Web look at the landscape and decide that things need to be balanced?

Yeah, I know this is a bit of a tangent, but it’s an interesting one.

That’s the chicken and egg problem every site faces. You can write great content all day, but if no one sees it they won’t link it, digg it, vote it, promote it, stumble, tumbl it etc. lol. So its’ almost like you have to cheat the first few times to get in front of the right people but once you do, your great content will do the rest. I’ve seen a few bloggers that recently hit the big time with great content but they did so by getting the attention of a blogger higher up on the food chain who showcased that great content and propelled the new blogger to stardom. It truly is the social web, but you still (thankfully) have to write great content.

I think the problems were:

1) Google didn’t actively and drastically penalize those selling TLA or linking to other sites that aren’t relevant
2) Website operators were making some income via TLA or direct sells.

If there wasn’t a market and people weren’t making money from it, then most people wouldn’t care. I mean, when you buy/sell on TLA you aren’t really wanting traffic. You are wanting backlinks without no-follow tags. If you were in it for the traffic, you’d use other services. You also want to make a quick buck.

In the mean time, people were seeing their PageRank increase via linking schemes. To them, Google wasn’t enforcing the rules while they got a high PageRank and/or earned some money on the side.

I think people are a little more aware of this now that several major blogs were recently penalized for buying/selling links.

However, I think more of the web will soon be aware. Google and Yahoo! are both experimenting with their SERP’s by filtering them with social networking data. For instance, Yahoo! is now incorporating DEL.ICIO.US bookmarking stats on their SERP’s. Google is adding a “vote” feature to their SERP pages.

I think in time, the mass public - the website visitors - will overpower the website operators power to influence the SERP’s. Regardless of how many links sold/traded on a website, the conglomeration of social web users will have the biggest impact on the SERP ranking behind the search engine algorithm.

I don’t disagree at all with the idea of them trying to improve the SERPS. If they want to stay on top of things, they have to do so. But they also need to realize they created the supply and demand themselves with PageRank having value. PageRank is now such a minor part of the algo that it’s not even important. I don’t even care about it and the only reason I look at it is for clients who are still convinced it’s important.

I’m perfectly willing to nofollow any link that might benefit me or the person I’m linking if it benefits either of us in a formal arrangement (ads, affiliate links, etc.) and leave the natural links as is (things like linking to articles, etc.) Google has already started accounting for most of that automatically and for the most part, affiliate links don’t need any link juice.

As for the idea of “linkware”, I’m also happy to nofollow that. For one, I know for a fact Google “does follow” those, they just don’t give them as much weight and perhaps doesn’t pass any PR, which is fine. I’m not trying to game the system by releasing something like that, but I am looking for a little free advertisement for the theme, plugin, or whatever and having nofollow doesn’t hurt my feelings, so I think that’s a fair deal.

Part of the problem is that one search engine is dictating how we can and can’t make money and I think that bothers me the most. They are in a position to dictate what’s allowed and what isn’t. Part of it is keeping the SERPs pure, but it’s also about protecting their own ad network (adsense) too. I have no doubt they want to make sure people keep buying ads through them vs going directly to us (webmasters) for those same ads.

I’ll continue to play by the rules because I want to. I’m in no way a black hat or even grey hat, I prefer to do things by the book and strive for great content and great relationships to help push me to the top of the list in my niches. But I’m not happy about losing a resource stream on some of my smaller blogs that don’t make much money other ways.

Again, for the record, I’m pretty happy with Google. I don’t like everything they do, but then again, I don’t like everything my friends do either, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like them.