Thread: Content Is King vs. Information Overload

Originally Posted by firetown

Just like in regular media, people will be interested in what they are being presented with. What they don't know exists, they are not going to miss. Whatever information is out there in it's poor quality is what reaches them. Most of the sites I truly find informative are buried, but how many of the people I know are really inquisitive?
I guess that in its flawed algorithm, Google is just another extension of mass media. It was once different, about 10 years ago those who caught on early tended to have something to say.
The only way to truly provide continued value would be popularity driven media based on votes rather than algorithms, but I see no incentive for Google to change much as long as there is no alternative demanding change on their part to remain competitive.

Google has changed the nature of linking. Before Google, people found a site from a link. There were thousands of sites with useful resource pages and plently of pages with useful embedded links. Even geocities had thousands of great pages.

Nowadays the average webmaster doesn't want to link out unless there is something in it for them.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

memenode:

I was just watching Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen and he was using animation to convert data to information in very useful ways.

The software he used to create that presentation was Trendalyzer from Gapminder. Google acquired Trendalyzer and it is now part of the Google Visualization API.

So if you don't mind sharing your data with Google...

Great video and awesome software. I'm not really surprised it's already in Google's hands, but perhaps it'll give some more companies ideas to create something similar or even better, perhaps open source, so it can be used independently.

I actually already found some candidates like Axiis and OpenDX, but I'm not sure if they compare to Trednalyzer.

There's also an interesting article presenting some data visualizations on Smashing Magazine.

Hm this inspires me to consider playing with visualization a little more in future content to make it more attractive..

Originally Posted by bogart

Google has changed the nature of linking. Before Google, people found a site from a link. There were thousands of sites with useful resource pages and plently of pages with useful embedded links. Even geocities had thousands of great pages.

Nowadays the average webmaster doesn't want to link out unless there is something in it for them.

That makes sense and was to happen sooner or later. Regardless of whether search engines started penalizing link farms they're still ugly and handful. I think the natural way of linking to other content is within exact context, in the article talking about something. Otherwise the only way it makes sense is as a paid ad or in limited cases, a link exchange.

Originally Posted by memenode

That makes sense and was to happen sooner or later. Regardless of whether search engines started penalizing link farms they're still ugly and handful. I think the natural way of linking to other content is within exact context, in the article talking about something. Otherwise the only way it makes sense is as a paid ad or in limited cases, a link exchange.

I think resource pages a o.k. as well as log as they are only a couple of pages and the links are relevant resorces.

Originally Posted by bogart

I think resource pages a o.k. as well as log as they are only a couple of pages and the links are relevant resorces.

I agree, that is, I don't personally have much of a problem with them as long as it's not overdone. But I can understand if people do this less in recent times, especially with the kinds of incentives and disincentives Google provides (which encouraged many people to offer less free links of fear of being de-indexed for "link farming" and incentivized link selling).

Originally Posted by memenode

I agree, that is, I don't personally have much of a problem with them as long as it's not overdone. But I can understand if people do this less in recent times, especially with the kinds of incentives and disincentives Google provides (which encouraged many people to offer less free links of fear of being de-indexed for "link farming" and incentivized link selling).

The one & two page resource pages are still doing well as long as the links are relevant.

You especially see a lot of these pages on government sites, education sites and professional sites.

The old style directory pages have been mainly deindexed. At best some of the pages are in the supplemental index.

There's nothing we can do about our potential visitors suffering from information overload.

But yeah, just focus on creating unique content and high quality backlinks for your site so that it rank top 10 on major search engines. That can help your visitors from having the feeling of information overload because they have just started looking for info online and is actually eager to read what you have on your site.

If you understand what I mean, hehe