1. Latest Hot Topics In
SEO & Search
ISDI SEO Workshop
June 14, 2011
Barry Schwartz

2. SEO & Search
• About Me
• Google Updates
• History
• Famous Updates
• Panda
• SEO Penalties
• Future SEO & Search

3. About Me

4. New York (8)

5. City University of NY

6. RustyBrick
• 1994 > 1999 > 2011
• Web Development &
Software
• Mobile, iPhone &
Android Applications
• 20 Employees
• MTV, Harvard, Harper
Collins, etc.

7. Search Engine Roundtable
• Started 2003
• 10,000+ Stories
• Tracks Search & SEO
• Awards, etc.

8. Search Engine Land
• December 2006
• Names
• Danny Sullivan
• Chris Sherman
• Greg Sterling
• Via Search Engine Watch

9. SMX SphinnCon
• Chair SphinnCon Israel
• 2008
• 500 Attendees

10. Cited

11. SEO & Search
• About Me
• Google Updates
• History
• Famous Updates
• Panda
• SEO Penalties
• Future SEO & Search

12. Google Updates
• How Google Updates
• Famous Updates
• Panda In Detail

13. GoogleBot

14. Google Index & Servers

15. Google Dance
• Monthly Index Updates
• 2000 - 2003
• Data Centers Update
• Danced For ~ Week
• PageRank Watchers

16. Rolling Updates

17. Types Of Updates
• Algorithm Updates (i.e. Panda)
• Data Refreshes (i.e. Individual Complaints)
• Index Update (i.e. Caffeine)

18. Google Updates
• How Google Updates
• Famous Updates
• Panda In Detail

19. Famous Updates
• Fritz (Summer 2003) • Paid Links (October 2007)
• Florida (November 2003) • Dewey Update (Mar 2008)
• Austin Update (Jan 2004) • Vince / Brand (March 2009)
• The Sandbox (April 2004) • May Day (May 2010)
• Bourbon (May 2005) • Caffeine (June 2010)
• Big Daddy (October 2005) • Scraper Filter (Jan. 2011)
• Supplemental (Jan 2007) • Panda (February 2011)

20. Fritz Update
• Summer 2003
• Index Update
• Google Dance Over
• Daily Index Updates
• AKA “Everflux”

21. Florida Update
• November 2003
• Algorithm Update
• Before Holiday Season
• Overly SEO’d Sites &
Affiliate Sites
• Businesses Went Bust
• Theories on AdWords

22. Austin Update
• January 2004
• Algorithm Update
• Revision To Florida
• Targets More SEO Techn
• Link Farms, Stuff
Keywords, etc
• Easy SEO Dead

23. Google Sandbox
• April 2004
• Algorithm Update
• New Sites Won’t Rank
• Buying Old Sites
• Bourbon Update Fixes
It? May 2005

24. Bourbon Update
• May - June 2005
• Algorithm Update
• Off-Page Factors
• Reciprocal Links
• Irrelevant Links
• Duplicate Content

25. Big Daddy / Jagger
• Oct. 2005 - Mar. 2006
• Index/Algorithm Update
• Infrastructure Change
• Low Value Pages Gone
• Supplemental Index?
• Faster Index Updates

26. Goodbye Supplemental
• Dec. 2006 - Jan. 2007
• Index Update
• Supplemental Index Gone
• Main Index Goes Deeper,
Faster & Comprehensive

27. Paid Links
• October 2007
• Algorithm Update
• Paid Links Targeted
• PageRank Penalties
• Forbes, NewsDay, Blogs
& SERoundtable.com
• Why Now?

28. Dewey Update
• March/April 2008
• Index Update
• Google Dance Like
• Targets:
• SEO’d Content
• Links

29. Vince / Brand Update
• March 2009
• Algorithm Update
• Big Brands Take Over
• Google Said Not Brands
• Trust, Authority,
Quality & PageRank

30. May Day Update
• April - May 2010
• Algorithm Update
• Long Tail Impact
• Quality Change
• Many Sites Hurt
• Quality vs Off Topic

31. Caffeine Update
• August 2009 - June 2010
• Infrastructure Update
• No Ranking Change
• Pages Missing From Index
• Faster, Fresher, Deeper
Index, Within Minutes

32. Scraper Update
• January 2011
• Targets Low Quality
Scraper Sites
• Warned Days Prior
• Panda Soon To Come

33. Panda Update
• Late February 2011
• Algorithm Update
• 12% Of Results Changed
• Targets Low Quality
Sites, Less Useful Sites,
Little Content, Little
Value

34. Famous Updates
• Fritz (Summer 2003) • Paid Links (October 2007)
• Florida (November 2003) • Dewey Update (Mar 2008)
• Austin Update (Jan 2004) • Vince / Brand (March 2009)
• The Sandbox (April 2004) • May Day (May 2010)
• Bourbon (May 2005) • Caffeine (June 2010)
• Big Daddy (October 2005) • Scraper Filter (Jan. 2011)
• Supplemental (Jan 2007) • Panda (February 2011)

35. Google Updates
• How Google Updates
• Famous Updates
• Panda In Detail

36. Panda Update In Detail
• Pre-Panda
• Panda Goals
• SEO Opinion
• Tips & Techniques
• Have Sites Recovered

37. The Pre-Panda Google
• Bad Press
• SEOs Complaining vs Taking Advantage
• Google’s Focus On Hacked Sites
• Poor Quality Results
• Content Farms Rule?

38. Pre-Panda Press
• Paul Kedrosky, Dishwashers, and How
Google Eats Its Own Tail:
Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail.
Identify some words that show up in profitable searches -- from appliances,
to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons -- churn out content cheaply and
regularly, and you're done. On the web, no-one knows you're a content-
grinder.
The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just,
for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original
or re-purposed. It hearkens back to the dark days of 1999, before Google
arrived, when search had become largely useless, with results completely
overwhelmed by spam and info-clutter.

39. Pre-Panda Press
• Alan Patrick, On the increasing uselessness
of Google:
The lead up to the Christmas and New Year holidays required researching a
number of consumer goods to buy, which of course meant using Google to search
for them and ratings reviews thereof. But this year it really hit home just how badly
Google's systems have been spammed, as typically anything on Page 1 of the search
results was some form of SEO spam - most typically a site that doesn't actually sell
you anything, just points to other sites (often doing the same thing) while slipping
you some Ads (no doubt sold as "relevant")...
Google is like a monoculture, and thus parasites have a major impact once they
have adapted to it - especially if Google has "lost the war". If search was more
heterogenous, spamsites would find it more costly to scam every site. That is a very
interesting argument against the level of Google market dominance.

40. Pre-Panda Press
• Jeff Atwood, Trouble in the House of
Google:
Throughout my investigation I had nagging doubts that we were seeing
serious cracks in the algorithmic search foundations of the house that
Google built. But I was afraid to write an article about it for fear I'd be
claimed an incompetent kook. I wasn't comfortable sharing that opinion
widely, because we might be doing something obviously wrong. Which we
tend to do frequently and often. Gravity can't be wrong. We're just clumsy
… right?
I can't help noticing that we're not the only site to have serious problems
with Google search results in the last few months. In fact, the drum beat of
deteriorating Google search quality has been practically deafening of late.

41. Pre-Panda Press
• TechCrunch: Why We Desperately Need a
New (and Better) Google
The problem is that content on the internet is growing exponentially
and the vast majority of this content is spam. This is created by
unscrupulous companies that know how to manipulate Google’s page-
ranking systems to get their websites listed at the top of your search
results. When you visit these sites, they take you to the websites of
other companies that want to sell you their goods. (The spammers get
paid for every click.) This is exactly what blogger Paul Kedrosky found
when trying to buy a dishwasher.

42. Pre-Panda Press
• ReadWriteWeb: Content Farms: Why
Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried
Google Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
I can only hope that Google and other search engines find betters ways to surface quality
content, for its own sake as well as ours. Because right now Google is being infiltrated on a
vast scale by content farms.
If you thought it was bad enough that many professional blogs pump out 30 posts a day,
often regurgitations of press releases or quick write-ups of "news" such as Twitter being
down for a few minutes (note the irony of that tweet), this new type of Google gaming is on
a far bigger scale.
What Demand Media, Answers.com and AOL are doing is having a much greater impact on
the quality and findability of content on the Web.

43. Complaints
• Aaron Wall of SEO Book
on Mahalo *
• Michael Gray on eHow,
About.com, etc. *
• WebmasterWorld
Complaints On Google
Quality *

44. Hacked Sites
• 2009-2010 Focus on
Hacked Sites
• 2011 Move Resources
Back To Search Quality
• Google Reduced Hacked
Sites In Results by 90%

45. Panda Update In Detail
• Pre-Panda
• Panda Goals
• SEO Opinion
• Tips & Techniques
• Have Sites Recovered

46. Google’s Answer: Panda
• Shut Press
• Answer To Bing
• Answer To Quality
• Shinny Search Results

47. Quiet The Press
• Matt Cutts Admits Faults
Referencing Press *
• Says Spam Reduced
• Hack Sites Less
• Index Size & Freshness
Improved
• Promises Improvements

48. Bing & Blekko
• Google Copying Bing
• Blekko Mocking
Google Spam & Bans
Content Farms
• Facebook Planting
Smear Campaigns

49. Quality = Panda
• February 24, 2011 *
• 12% Results Change
• Huge Changes In Results
• April 11th, 2% Changes
& Global Rollout
• 84% Overlap on
Chrome Extension

50. Apple Packaged Results

51. Panda Update In Detail
• Pre-Panda
• Panda Goals
• SEO Opinion
• Tips & Techniques
• Have Sites Recovered

52. Who’s Hit?
• eHow.com 66%
• ezinearticles.com 90%
• associatedcontent.com 93%
• mahalo.com 84%
• articlesbase.com 94%
Source: Sistrix

53. eHow Decline
Source: Sistrix

54. Mahalo Keywords
Source: Sistrix

55. 40% Say Hurt
• 40% said Less Google
Traffic (Negative Impact)
• 25% said Same Google
Traffic (No Impact)
• 18% said More Google
Traffic (Positive Impact)
• 14% said Don't Know
Yet
Source: SERoundtable.com

56. Types Of Sites Hurt
• Low Quality Content?
• Mass Produced Content?
• Sites With Lots of Ads?
• Copied Content
• Less Useful Content

57. Did Google Improve?
• Google Says Yes Wired.com: Do you feel that this update
has done what you wanted it to do?
• 84% Blocklist Overlap Cutts: I would say so. I got an e-mail from
someone who wrote out of the blue and
• Wired Quote said, “Hey, a couple months ago, I was
worried that my daughter had pediatric
multiple sclerosis, and the content farms
“According to our were ranking above government sites,”
metrics, this update Now, she said, the government sites are
improves overall search ranking higher. So I just wanted to write
and say thank you.
quality,” Wysz, Google
Forums. Singhal: It’s really doing what we said it
would do.

58. Did Google Improve?
"Farmer," on the other hand, as
a reaction to criticisms
regarding the quality - as
• SEOs Mostly Say No opposed to relevance - of sites
appearing in the search results,
• Bias? has achieved the same sort of
scale of collateral damage as
"Florida" without actually hitting
the mark. - WebmasterWorld

59. Pandalized

60. Panda Update In Detail
• Pre-Panda
• Panda Goals
• SEO Opinion
• Tips & Techniques
• Have Sites Recovered

61. Tips To Recover
• Google Advice
• SEO Advice

62. Google Advice : Help
• Google Opens Support
Thread
• ~4,000 Posts Since
March
• Very Few Google
Responses

63. Google Advice: Jan 28
One thing that is very important to our users (and algorithms) is
high-quality, unique and compelling content. Looking
through that site, I have a hard time finding content that is only
available on the site itself. If you do have such high-quality, unique
and compelling content, I'd recommend separating it
from the auto-generated rest of the site, and making
sure that the auto-generated part is blocked from
crawling and indexing, so that search engines can focus on
what makes your site unique and valuable to users world-wide.
- John Mueller, Google

64. Google Advice: March 7
Our recent update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, so
the key thing for webmasters to do is make sure their sites are the
highest quality possible. We looked at a variety of signals to detect low
quality sites. Bear in mind that people searching on Google typically don't
want to see shallow or poorly written content, content that’s
copied from other websites, or information that are just not that
useful. In addition, it's important for webmasters to know that low quality
content on part of a site can impact a site's ranking as a whole. For this
reason, if you believe you've been impacted by this change you should
evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the
overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality
pages or moving them to a different domain could help your
rankings for the higher quality content.
- Wysz, Google

65. Google Advice: May 6
• Amit Singhal
• 23 Questions

66. Google Advice: Q1
• Would you trust the information presented
in this article?

69. Google Advice: Q2
• Is this article written
by an expert or
enthusiast who
knows the topic
well, or is it more
shallow in nature?

70. Google Advice: Q3
• Does the site have
duplicate,
overlapping, or
redundant articles on
the same or similar
topics with slightly
different keyword
variations?

71. Google Advice: Q4
• Would you be
comfortable giving
your credit card
information to this
site?

72. Google Advice: Q5
• Does this article
have spelling,
stylistic, or factual
errors?

73. Google Advice: Q6
• Are the topics driven
by genuine interests
of readers of the
site, or does the site
generate content by
attempting to guess
what might rank well
in search engines?

74. Google Advice: Q7
• Does the article
provide original
content or
information, original
reporting, original
research, or original
analysis?

75. Google Advice: Q8
• Does the page
provide substantial
value when
compared to other
pages in search
results?

76. Google Advice: Q9
• How much quality
control is done
on content?

77. Google Advice: Q10
• Does the article
describe both
sides of a story?

78. Google Advice: Q11
• Is the site a
recognized
authority on its
topic?

79. Google Advice: Q12
• Is the content mass-
produced by or
outsourced to a large
number of creators, or
spread across a large
network of sites, so
that individual pages
or sites don’t get as
much attention or
care?

80. Google Advice: Q13
• Was the article edited
well, or does it appear
sloppy or hastily
produced?

81. Google Advice: Q14
• For a health related
query, would you trust
information from this
site?

82. Google Advice: Q15
• Would you recognize
this site as an
authoritative source
when mentioned by
name?

83. Google Advice: Q16
• Does this article
provide a complete or
comprehensive
description of the
topic?

84. Google Advice: Q17
• Does this article
contain insightful
analysis or interesting
information that is
beyond obvious?

85. Google Advice: Q18
• Is this the sort of page
you’d want to
bookmark, share with
a friend, or
recommend?

86. Google Advice: Q19
• Does this article have
an excessive amount
of ads that distract
from or interfere with
the main content?

87. Google Advice: Q20
• Would you expect to
see this article in a
printed magazine,
encyclopedia or book?

88. Google Advice: Q21
• Are the articles short,
unsubstantial, or
otherwise lacking in
helpful specifics?

89. Google Advice: Q22
• Are the pages
produced with great
care and attention to
detail vs. less attention
to detail?

90. Google Advice: Q23
• Would users complain
when they see pages
from this site?

91. Google Advice: May 6
One other specific piece of guidance
we've offered is that low-quality
content on some parts of a website
• Amit Singhal can impact the whole site’s
rankings, and thus removing low
quality pages, merging or
• 23 Questions improving the content of
individual shallow pages into more
• Solution useful pages, or moving low quality
pages to a different domain could
eventually help the rankings of your
higher-quality content.

92. Matt Cutts : May 25th

93. Tips To Recover
• Google Advice
• SEO Advice

94. SEO Advice
• Check Your Analytics Data To Ensure You're
Investigating the Right Problem
• Pinpoint The Query Categories and Pages In
Decline
• Make a Prioritized Plan
• File A Reconsideration Request
Vanessa Fox: http://selnd.com/gcovE8

95. SEO Advice
• Address the most • Don't delete, improve the
significantly impacted content of the page
pages first, get rid of immediately.
them
• Reduce the number of
• Use Meta Robots internal links
noindex, follow tag on
individual pages • Improve the content X
ad density ratio. More
• Delete the pages unique content on ad
permanently heavy pages.
Ben Pfeiffer: http://ser.bz/eW8vZH

96. SEO Advice
• Remove redundant • Address boilerplate content.
pagination Reduce it, or consider
making it unique for each
• Use the rel="canonical" page
attribute on duplicate pages
• Give Google feedback on the
• Do nothing quite yet, watch update and how it impacted
your website
and see what happens
• Revisit those dark and • Submit a reinclusion request
forgotten parts of your once you have cleaned up
website, eliminate any junk portions of your website
Ben Pfeiffer: http://ser.bz/eW8vZH

97. SEO Advice
• Reduce Number Of Ads • More Investment in
Content
• Move Placement Of Ads
• Different Writing Styles
• Quality Content
• Vary Length Of Articles
• Don’t Let Google Access
Questionable Pages • Info Architecture To
Expose Good Content

98. SEO Advice
• Wary of UGC
• Analytics: See Pages With Low Time Spent
• Site Speed?
• Do Not Manipulate Google

99. Panda Update In Detail
• Pre-Panda
• Panda Goals
• SEO Opinion
• Tips & Techniques
• Have Sites Recovered

100. Any Recovery?
• April Some Reports of
Incremental Returns
• False Full Recovery
Reports
• Poll
• Expert SEOs

101. Did You Recover From Panda?
8%
5% No
Yes - Not Fully
13% Yes - Fully
N/A
74%

102. Expert SEOs Say...
NO

103. Expert SEOs Say...
NO

104. Expert SEOs Say...
NO

105. Expert SEOs Say...
NO

106. Expert SEOs Say...
NO
but... slight uptick in
traffic like 10-20%
but no FULL
recoveries

107. Expert SEOs Say...
NO

108. Expert SEOs Say...
No

109. Expert SEOs Say...
No

110. Panda Manually Pushed

111. Panda Timeline
• Panda 1.0 - Late February (12%)
• Panda 2.0 (International) - April 11th (2%)
• Panda 2.1 - Early March
• Panda 2.2 - Mid-June?

112. Panda 2.2 : Expect...
• Coming Very Soon (being tested internally)
• Improved Scraper Detection
• No Manual Exceptions Still
• Updates To Date Have Not Been Push
Backs (i.e. Florida pull backs)

114. Google Updates
• How Google Updates
• Famous Updates
• Panda In Detail

115. SEO & Search
• About Me
• Google Updates
• History
• Famous Updates
• Panda
• SEO Penalties
• Future SEO & Search

116. Google Penalties

117. Google Penalties
• Google Webmaster Communication
• Official Google Penalty Notifications
• Unofficial Penalty Signs

118. Google Communication
• GoogleGuy @ WebmasterWorld
• 2001

119. GoogleGuy = Matt Cutts

120. Adam Lasnik
• 2007
• “Mini Matt”
• Official Google Rep For
Webmasters

121. More...

122. and more...

123. Google Penalties
• Google Webmaster Communication
• Official Google Penalty Notifications
• Unofficial Penalty Signs

124. Official Notifications

125. Official Notifications

126. Official Notifications

127. Google Penalties
• Google Webmaster Communication
• Official Google Penalty Notifications
• Unofficial Penalty Signs

128. Unofficial Signs

129. Unofficial Signs

130. Unofficial Signs

131. Unofficial Signs

132. Unofficial Signs

133. Source: SEOmoz

134. Source: SEOmoz

135. Google Penalties
• Google Webmaster Communication
• Official Google Penalty Notifications
• Unofficial Penalty Signs

136. SEO & Search
• About Me
• Google Updates
• History
• Famous Updates
• Panda
• SEO Penalties
• Future SEO & Search

137. Search Evolution
• Search 1.0 - On Page Factors - 1996
• Search 2.0 - Off Page Factors - 1998
• Search 3.0 - Vertical Factors - 2007
• Search 4.0 - Social Factors - 2010

138. Search 1.0
• 1996
• Textual Search
• On-Page Criteria

139. Search 2.0
• 1998
• Off-Page Factors
• Links & PageRank

140. Search 3.0
• 2007
• Vertical Results Blended
• Ask 3D
• Google Universal Search
• Bing

143. Question
Answer
Answer
What Is Search?

144. Search Marketing & SEO
• Search Marketing is
working to be found
when someone overtly
expresses a need or
desire
• Search or
• Shaking A Phone or
• Taking A Picture

145. Search Marketing & SEO
• SEO is working to be visible in the unpaid search results
Paid
Free

146. Social Media is...
• Social Networking:
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn
• Social Bookmarking:
Delicious, StumbleUpon
• Social News:
Reddit, Digg
• Social Knowledge:
Wikipedia,Yahoo Answers
• Social Sharing:
Twitter,YouTube, Flickr,Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook…

147. Search 4.0
• Social Search
• Human Elements
• Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Google
+1, Blocksites, etc

148. Social Search Is...
• Search Results Influenced By Social Sites
• Your Social Network
• Global Social Networks
• Not Searching Social Content
• Facebook Search or Twitter Search

152. Real Time Content

153. Real Time Search

154. Google Real Time

155. Bing Real Time Search

158. Search Evolution
• Search 1.0 - On Page Factors - 1996
• Search 2.0 - Off Page Factors - 1998
• Search 3.0 - Vertical Factors - 2007
• Search 4.0 - Social Factors - 2010

159. More Search Features
• Geolocation (Location)
• Personalization (Search History)
• Blocking Sites
• +1 Sites
• Social Search

160. Search Marketing 4.0
• Tweets & Likes Is New Link Building
• Not Only Ranking Factors
• Get More Visibility, More Traffic, More Links
• Authority Counts (i.e. auto-retweets)

161. Google Me

162. American Airlines

163. Chrysler SuperBowl Ad

164. TV Makes Users Search

165. Follow Me on Twitter

166. Friend Me On Facebook

167. Facebook Pages

168. Offline Marketing
Goes Online
Your Customers Are Searching...
Make Sure You Are Found!

169. @rustybrick
Follow Me On Twitter

170. facebook.com/rustybrick
Like Me On Facebook

171. rustybrick.com/barry
barry@rustybrick.com

172. More On Search
• searchengineland.com
• seroundtable.com
• searchengineland.com/searchcap.php
• sphinn.com
• searchmarketingexpo.com

173. Questions?

174. Questions Submitted
Online By Attendees

175. Q1: Mobile SEO?
Is there any main difference between the Mobile SEO
respect conventional SEO?

176. Mobile SEO Issues : Old Phones
• Google’s Mobile Index vs. Web Index
• UserAgent : Googlebot-Mobile
• HTTP "Accept” Header to Serve Mobile Pages
• Mobile Markup Languages
• WML, XHTML Basic, XHTML MP & cHTML
• Mobile XML Sitemap
• Resources: http://goo.gl/izztR

177. Mobile SEO Issues: Smart Phones
• Detect UserAgent: http://goo.gl/QC5TY
• Use Special Stylesheet
• Keep URLs The Same
• Keep Content The Same
• Make User Interface Easier
• Make Speed Faster

179. Desktop Version

180. Mobile Version

181. Print Version

182. Mobile SEO Issues
• Duplicate URLs with Same Content
• m.domain.com
• domain.com/&printable=yes
• Different Content on Same URLs
• Cloaking
• IP Delivery
• One Site, One Content, Different Dress

183. Q2: Speed Crawl
How can you make Google to crawl your website after
an update in your content, pages, etc?

184. Increase Crawl Frequency
• Update Content Often
• RSS Feeds May Help
• XML Sitemap Files
• Higher PageRank
• More Links & Higher Up In Site Structure

185. Q3: Panda Expanded
Is the Panda algorithm identifying duplicate contents
and patterns: same URLs, titles…(?). If your site has
been hit, how can this be overcome? Will it be enough if
you rewrite the content? or should you add more value
by adding more contents (images, video…). How good
will the algorithm be at identifying those same things in
other languages.

186. Cutts On Languages
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

187. Q4: Hit By Panda?
Do you know of any site which has really been hit by
Panda (not any other kind penalization/ban) and has
managed to get rid of it? If so, How?

188. Sorry - No

189. Q5: UGC
How does Google consider users’ profiles on social
networks and user generated content by them? Could
be a lot of void users profiles (therefore, dupes) or not
frequently updated a signal of a low quality site? What
about used generated content?

191. If users are creating content for your site (eg if you have a wiki or something similarly user-created), then I
think it's definitely a good idea to help them to create high-quality content, be that by providing a spelling
checking mechanism, or by making it possible for other users (or you :-)) to fix quality-issues as they are
found.
On the other hand, if these are comments or testimonials left behind by users, then I think it would be a bit
weird to modify them. Would you like to have that happen to feedback that you leave behind on other sites?
Personally, that would bother me a bit. As the site-owner, I think it's fine (and usually expected) to make an
editorial decision in whether or not a comment should remain on your site. Ultimately, it's up to you do make
a decision on where you want to draw a line :-).
One way to think about this is to look at what users are searching for when they reach pages like that. Are
they looking for the content in the comments? If so, one solution could be to take some of those comments
and to keep a cleaner version within your own content, referencing the exact user comment further below
on that page. For example: "Update: In response to this article, XZY left an insightful comment saying ABC.
You can find the full comment below."
Another possible solution might be to allow users to "+1" (upvote) comments, and to only show the most
insightful ones by default. Users would still be able to view all comments (maybe on a separate URL that isn't
indexed, or through the use of AJAX), but by default, the ones shown and allowed to be indexed would be the
ones that your users have found to be the most important ones. Depending on your audience, I imagine that
could result in the lower-quality comments disappearing on their own.
Hope this gives you some ideas :) -- it would be great to hear back from you regarding your choice and how
that works out for you.

192. Link Building Tips
• Quality Pages • Badges/Awards
• Guest Posting • Incentives
• Sponsorships/Partners • Testimonials
• Infographics • Get Scrapped
• Videos • Exchange Links
• Tools • Paid Links...