Search Blind Spot: WordPress Free Themes
January 15, 2011
We don’t do much searching for words and phrases designed to get traffic for this blog. We use jargon, some Greek and Latin, a little Hebrew, and quite a bit of insider jargon. My favorites are “azure chip consultant” (folks who couldn’t get a job at one of the top management consulting firms) and “real journalists” (people who were nuked from publishing companies when revenues went the way of the iPad News Corp. newspaper.
But “Why You Should Never Search for Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else” alerted me to another example of “objective” search results gone wrong, very, very wrong. Here’s the key passage:
Someone who has come to WordPress on the first time is more than likely to type “free WordPress themes” into Google to find a site that gives them what they want. Unfortunately they’re more than likely to end up with spammy links, at best, on their site. Of course, the WordPress Theme Directory can be frustrating in its lack of themes that work with WordPress 3.0. Many of the themes look a little out of date and lots look very bloggy.
Why? Spammers have found ways to generate traffic to Web sites that may not contain what the user needs, wants, or expects. If you want to include some of the spammy trick, the write up includes numerous code examples.
Why are search engines filtering for baloney? Do you think money is a motivator?
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2011
Freebie
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