Guys, please leave joking out of this thread, if you want to joke around please do so in general discussion. Please only post here if you want stumbles or del.icio.us thank you!

but in some recent articles I read, they were saying that if your site is not stumbled, or del.icio.us that you may drop in the rankings.

and you believed it??????

maybe a link to this "article" is in order then.

let me try to pull it up, I read lots of articles every day so...

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/interv...delicious.html

I don't see anything that could be taken as affecting rankings anywhere in there, and it's hardly a recent "article" (Nov 2005)

I said I read a recent article I did not say it was recent

Not what you said here.

Originally Posted by theseokit

ChrisChrist, I know that this is not really for getting traffic, but in some recent articles I read, they were saying that if your site is not stumbled, or del.icio.us that you may drop in the rankings. How true that is I am not sure yet, that is why I am doing this. To gain rep from the community and to do some testing myself


Done Guys, Enjoy!

Bolding mine

HMM, when I read that it tells me that I read some recent articles... It could have been worded differently Im sure

Hmm

"some recent articles I read" is not the same as "some articles I read recently"

So whats the bottom line here?

You're site won't drop in rankings if it's not popular in either StumbleUpon or del.icio.us or any other social media site for that matter. Take two seconds to think about it. Most sites will never get content to the front page of any social media site. Those sites have communities that like specific kinds of content and they like specific kinds of content.

The point of social media sites as far as seo is concerned is that if you do manage to get a lot of traffic from them some of that traffic may become subscribers to your blog if they like it or they might give links back to your content.

It's not a matter of dropping because you don't get stumbled or bookmarked. It's just that those sites can help improve how you do rank, but it's more of an indirect thing.

I figured as much, no site not even a search engine like google could drop sites from the ranking of other websites. But I thought I would do it on a large scale for myself, and other people just to be safe!

Maybe a good analogy, maybe not....

During several wars across this globe, one side or the other had to print money to pay their soldiers. As the costs increased, more money was printed, but there were no reserves (such as gold, silver, etc.) to back this printed money. In essence, the market was flooded with this money and simply became useless after it's first initiation into the war.

SEO is a similar war. Everyone wants to come out on top. The leaders are trying to find ways to capitalize and get on top. To do this, they have to pay their followers (not is printed money, nor script, but in votes for their site in return for votes). Pretty soon, everyone is voting for everyone so that they can come out on top. The market is flooded with this "new, virtual" money and may simply become unless after it's first introduction into the war of the worldwide web.

I think it's a great idea to have some of these systems in place, even like Zoints. However, if you visit a site and give it a "thumbs up" just so you can receive the same, then you may have done the site an injustice if it's not what others will like or even want to see.

There's a very close correlation between this and asking for "talkupation". If you receive alot of talkupation simply because you ask for it, then the system has lost its meaning and the talkupation has become that useless printed paper.

My suggestion is to give a thumbs up or talkupation to people who deserve it, not to those that simply ask for it.

Dave

Ye if you could do mine, id appriciate that alright, its on my sig

thanks

Done, enjoy!

Originally Posted by DaveMo~

Maybe a good analogy, maybe not....

Not a good analogy, but a spot-on one.

Inflation happens in any competitive field, not just money. A friend was telling me how now that students are able to review teachers online at most universities, and this plays some role in whether the teacher is hired on long term, grades have been going up, because the teachers are afraid of bad reviews from their students. He was calling this "grade inflation."

It's also a concept SEOs are familiar with. People talk about directory links having been devalued by the search engines, which might be true. Or, it might be that everybody who's competing for that #1 spot has submitted to the same list of directories, and are on even footing. Their "link currency" is equalized, and worth less. You could probably test that - whether directory links really are devalued in the algorithms - by creating a site, and marketing it but not putting it in any directory. It's probably a moot point, though; there are a handful of truly great directories, and a lot of not-so-great clones, and at the end of the day it makes sense to be in the good ones.

But creating your own links ( maybe on wikis, or in blog comments? ) is a great metaphor for printing your own money.

I think it's a great analogy too. By the way Dave it's nice to see your advice about bartering for stumbles lasted until the very next post. Some people just don't get it.

Forrest that's a good point about the directories. I'll make another money analogy here. Let's say you have $1 and everyone else has a single penny. Good for you, but if all of a sudden everyone else also has $1 then yours doesn't seem to be worth what it was in part it's no longer unique. Now that everyone has one they don't need yours.

Furthering the analogy when you were the only one with $1 a loaf of bread might have only cost a penny since that's all anyone had. You could buy 100 loaves if you wanted. Now that everyone has $1 the price of bread has gone up to a quarter. Now you can only buy 4 loaves with your dollar.