1. So basically spam doesn't stand a chance of getting past the Mahalo smell-o-meter

Posted at 8:22PM on Jun 20th 2007 by Christian Burns

2. Great you said they didn't meet your editorial standards but then you went ahead and gave them a free straight link. In addition you probably sent a bunch of traffic that will bump up the other guys Alexa rank.

I'm thinking that probably wasn't the exact result you were hoping for ...

Posted at 8:29PM on Jun 20th 2007 by graywolf

3. Jason - some questions/notes:

On the iphone page, you note that "mobilesinsight.com" was not accepted because of the ads. I have never seen this site before but when I put it next to your engadget site, the number of ads is the same except for possibly one additional adsense unit. Why wasn't engadget banned?

Also, while I am not an SEO as defined by the others on your 'cast yesterday, I think putting spammers and seo's in the same sentence is unfair. I think there are spammers that are seo's but there is also a real percentage of seo's that are out to do the right thing when helping their clients.

Gewinnen anything to me means spam a good percentage of the time, and it's good that you blocked this user.

I think you need to be careful with the big red ban button. Just because one link might be spam, banning the entire domain might not give you the desired result.

Of course keeping Ryan happy is important, eh? :) Do you realize on the iPhone (not IPhone as you have listed) there are 5 references to Engadget links on that page? And I still haven't seen anyone check out my cost link. There goes that bias argument again...

Posted at 9:03PM on Jun 20th 2007 by allen stern

4. It sounds like a pretty solid system since the controversial decisions will generate free press. Gotta like that. One thing to watch out for is SEOs submitting legitimately awesome pages then changing the pages once they've been accepted. It would be worth having some kind of page tracking system in place to make sure you don't get gamed like that.

Posted at 9:22PM on Jun 20th 2007 by Ed Kohler

5. My entire blog, rickey.org has been banned on Mahalo.com after I submitted one of my category pages for Sanjaya Malakar which happens to be one of the most visited sites in the Sanjaya Universe. Anyone who has been following Sanjaya knows about my blog. Obviously your resident expert is not an expert in his field. In fact, one of the videos that is listed on the Sanjaya Malakar page is a video I uploaded -- which has a link to rickey.org. This is ridiculous. My entire blog is banned. Not getting any links from me, or goodwill.

Posted at 4:57AM on Jun 21st 2007 by Rickey

6. Jason,

How are you going to scale this? Great idea (a new version of yahoo circa '94) but has to be an overwhelming task to vet and keep these updated.

Posted at 8:55AM on Jun 21st 2007 by John

7. I really like this process, I think it hints at the future that whether it be through you or changing algorithms the real key to success will once again be publishing quality content.

Posted at 1:26PM on Jun 21st 2007 by Steve

8. In a developed keyword (ie. anywhere worth making money), how do SEOs game a search engine?

The only times I see SEOs "gaming" is when they are baiting bloggers and sites like digg. Basically, SEOs game people, kinda like your search engine, not machines like Google.

Posted at 6:01PM on Jun 21st 2007 by Gamermk

9. Makes one wonder what that "system" you're referring to is actually about: Search engines scraping sites they never built, misappropriating people's text content, graphics, bandwidth, violating copyright and monetizing on it all without deigning to even ask for permission let alone offering a share of the proceeds?

You call someone who builds a site, pays for it themselves and does with it as they please a "spammer" merely because you don't want to steal it?

Who's gaming whom in this equation?

Posted at 6:55PM on Jun 21st 2007 by 20LinksADay.com

10. Thats why I am a big fan of human run search engines.

Posted at 11:01PM on Jun 21st 2007 by David Mackey