Ryan

I've been checking almost daily on my end for the last two or three weeks and the search results are very different. I wonder if Google knows what sites I own? Or perhaps they customize search results for different parts of the world?

Ryan

I get your site as #1 for ryan healy and #6 for business growth.
(At least on Google.com calling from Spain)

Yours
John

Also, I used to rank #8 for “business growth” in Google and had been there for a while. Now my site cannot be found.

There are only two changes — new inputs — that could have caused this to happen. Either it was because I tested Adsense on this site again (Adsense usually negatively affects ranking… I've already removed Adsense to see what happens); or it was because I spoke negatively of Sidewiki.

Ryan

Sidewiki seems to have completely disregarded that foundation.

And yes, it will be interesting to see if it “takes” or gets eliminated.

Thanks Ryan for your always meaningful nuggets of marketing info.

Best,

Jim Rodante
@referral_pro

I noticed your comments over at Fortin's.

Not only that Sidewiki creates a marketing and legal nightmare for businesses, it's also not very useful for users. The comments lack authority, verifiability, … Where is the added value? It only will add to the confusion of consumers and be responsible for massive misinformation even if not abused.

Now marketers cannot even have their best customers give testimonials (thanks FTC), because the naive, average consumer could get wrong ideas. However, everybody can leave a comment right on a business' site, all over the place. Yes, “your site”! It's about perception: Same browser window and URL in the nav bar equals same site for the average user.

Furthermore Sidewiki is also the poorest implementaion of any service I have seen recently.

* Cannot canonicalize URLs which makes it even harder for site owners to check for sidewiki entries.
* And the API doesn't provide what would be easiest for site owners: One feed for all entries per domain/subdomain.

At a minimum Sidewiki must be opt-in!

I recommend every siteowner takes notes about the $ value involved dealing with sidewiki. From monitoring to potentially lost sales. There might come the time when this info will be handy in a class-action-suit against Google (if they don't listen to those who actually pay their bills).

Yours
John

I haven't used Sidewiki, so I can't say for sure, but I imagine it does work on Google's own sites.

And while it might be fun (and funny), I'm not sure retaliation is going to make Google listen. :-)

Now… if I were to retaliate, I think the first place I would start is Blogger/Blogspot, the worst blogging system with the worst comment system ever. ;-)

Ryan