If by automation congratulations on a superior though flawed algorithm, if by human intervention thank you for a sagacity surpassing superior bot-love.

The paper on “Web Spam Detection via Commercial Intent Analysis” is straightforward. Detecting “commercial intent” works just like Bayesian filtering of e-mail spam; you train on some commercial content and some non-commercial content, and build a classifier. As the paper points out, Yahoo has had that up for years. It’s easier than classifying e-mail, since sites that sell something have to look like they’re selling something or nobody will buy.

“One trick that some webmasters play is that they announce they will only accept link exchanges from sites that are topically related, and not entertain link exchange requests from topically unrelated sites. Such sites are sill [they did not spell check their article evidently] participating in link exchanges, and in some cases, such web sites end up dominating the top search ranks for queries related to the topic”.

The article implies that sites that link exchange with relevance for the end user are “spamming”. That’s outrageous.

Nowhere in the article is there a mention of “editorial discretion”, “editor”, or any words synonymous with editorial discretion on making links. The article implies that anyone exchanging links for the end user is “spamming”.

Lets hope that Google engineers are smarter than this. The article in itself sends the wrong message to webmasters who are making linking decisions for the end users.

I’ll wager that the kids who wrote this article have never marketed a new site on the web in their lives.

Ok. No more Linkfobia talk. Here is some serious things which you might wish to consider.

Since the introduction of Google new infrastructure BigDaddy, we have been intrioduced to successive data pushes / data refreshes which can/might affect some sites rankings in remarkable way.

Some webmasters have reported that their sites keep back and forth moving on GOOG’s serps.
In addition we we really don’t know for sure whether the friends at the plex have introduced new algos or filters which cause the “unstability” of ranking/indexing of some sites.

Maybe your site will bounce again within a week or so. Good news, right

“I’ll cash out and travel in Europe for a while, maybe with my database.”

Good Idea. We have very nice weather at present.

Honestly, that site of yours has spent its life carrying so many links on its shoulders. It couldn’t take it any more. Passed away suffering of Linksfobia

It is now the best edited, most comprehensive, most up-to-date women’s apparel directory on the web, I should know I’ve spent years building it and surveying the competition.

Women’s apparel is a huge industry, larger than search, and not dominated by one name.

I don’t need Google to monetize my talents or this database though its creation was underwritten with AdSense dollars and it has been a sweet ride with Google, I’m sad to see that end.

So the loss belongs to the people who search for clothing on Google. When GOOG hits 505. I’ll cash out and travel in Europe for a while, maybe with my database. I’ll be fine, though I do feel sorry for Google’s clothing searchers.

“The site paid well for a time but if it’s over, it’s over.”

That site has served you well and generated a lot of $$$ for you. Time now to let it rest in peace. God rest its sole.