Google and their Sidewiki can go to hell.

If you don’t know what Sidewiki is, don’t worry. I didn’t either until recently. It’s a new “feature” that Google came out with that allows users to make comments about other websites. It’s a toolbar that you have to install on your browser so you can see the comments displayed next to the web site. Not only that, but you can share spread those comments through Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles.

But I have a question…

What right does Google have to allow and encourage comments on MY web site?

Do they pay for my hosting? NO!

Do they pay for my domain name? NO!

Did they work hard to produce the content on my site? NO!

Have they spent hours and hours every week for years maintaining my site? NO!

So get the fuck off my site!! At the very least, give me the ability to turn your shitty sidewiki off.

Way to open even more doors for spammers and assholes Google! Good job!! You think people need a valid reason to be jerks? Think again. STOP MESSING WITH THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T MESS WITH!

I have enough things to occupy my day without adding “monitor sidewiki comments” to my already huge daily to-do list.

I’ll refrain from writing anything further at the moment since I’m a little irritable, but I implore you to read this in case you’re unsure of why I’m so upset about this.

If you think I’m overreacting, wait until you receive one of the comments mentioned in this post on your own website.

What about you? What do you think about Sidewiki?

Update: Apparently I’m not the only one who is fuming mad about SideWiki. Here are two more good reads. The first one is great if you don’t mind a bit of strong language.

The Sidewiki Abomination (I couldn’t have said it better myself!)

The Google Sidewiki Controversy (Sylvie Fortin – very smart lady and much more eloquent than I am.)

What pro-Sidewiki people have to remember is that there are insane amounts of scum-sucking wastes of flesh in this world who don’t give two shits about anyone but themselves and they will do what it takes to make you look bad. They don’t need a valid reason. Sidewiki just gives them an easy way to hurt other people who don’t deserve it. That sounds pretty evil to me.

It REALLY pisses me off (yes REALLY) when someone asks about an ebook in a forum and the other members come along and say it’s a scam without knowing anything about the ebook.

The ebook in question is actually one of the best in the niche and the author is genuinely interested in helping people. Of course he wants to make a buck, who wouldn’t? But just because he’s using a sales page – which I thought was great – it means he’s a scam artist I guess.

People really need to get over that stupid mentality. How is a sales page on the internet any different than an ad in the newspaper or a flyer in your mailbox?

Everybody needs to make money. We all have to support ourselves and our family.

So if people get offended when we sell something, well….I say screw off then! Nobody’s forcing them to buy it.

And then I saw this:

Brought to you by FileHurricane.com

So piss on it.

1. Never signal.
2. Speed up when other vehicles try to pass.
3. Drive the same speed as the car in the next lane so no one else can pass.
4. Honk or give people the finger when they make a full and complete stop at a 4-way stop or wait for a pedestrian who has the right of way.
5. Text on your cell phone while paying as little attention to the road and the people around you as possible.

There are more asshole qualities, but these are some of my biggest pet peeves.

Just ’cause you’re cruising around in your truck by yourself doesn’t mean there aren’t other drivers around you who will feel the effects of your asshole driving.

Blogging is the same. It may be your blog, but there are other people in the blogosphere who might get hurt if you ram into a telephone pole at 140 miles an hour. (I don’t have my analogy hat on today, sorry for the bad example.)

There are 5 definite characteristics of an asshole blogger. You’re an asshole blogger if you:

1. Attack a fellow blogger for link bait.
2. Scrape someone else’s content.
3. Publish someone else’s articles from directories without including the author bio or URLs.
4. Leave self-promoting or one-liner blog comments on other blogs instead of something useful, insightful or informative.
5. Bombard your subscribers’ email inboxes with nothing but promotional newsletters instead of quality content.

Again, I’ve only listed 5 asshole traits even though there are many more, but if I kept going my blood pressure might start going up.

I sure hope that you don’t have any of these endearing qualities. If you do, start changing the way you think and act because no one respects you, you crazy foo!

On a more positive note, here are 5 ways to be one of your friendly neighborhood bloggers:

1. Recognize other bloggers you admire and respect and link to them once in awhile.
2. Write content for your readers that they can really use and enjoy, not just rehashed crappola.
3. Respond to comments when other people reply to your posts, even if it’s just a quick “Thank you”.
4. Offer some bonus goodies for your loyal followers and commentators. This could be discounts on your products or some link lovin’ in your sidebar.
5. Treat your readers the same way you would want to be treated. Period.

I’ve been using Twitter for almost a year now. I’ve enjoyed it and will continue to enjoy it for (I hope) a long while yet.

However, the amount of people who are “gaming” Twitter is increasing and I’m actually quite pissed off about it.

There are all kinds of people who have all kinds of “tips” to increase followers, get more retweets, etc. Here’s a tip for those people.

Be yourself! Be real! Stop ruining it for the rest of us!

Auto-following, auto-DMs, unfollowing people as soon as they follow you back – this crap has to stop.

I’m not talking about stuff like this (How To Get ReTweeted – The Formula) – I completely agree with that. It’s when people try and inflate their numbers and use automation. It’s deceiving!

There is no secret to Twitter. But there are definitely ways to turn it into shit so the rest of Twitterland has to suffer.

I’m not concerned that I don’t have as many Twitter followers as Joe Blow, Guru Extraordinaire. I care about my relationship with them.

You can have 5000 followers and not have any kind of genuine connection with any of them because you’re a douche and use crappy tactics to increase your numbers.

You could also have less than 300 followers and have a great relationship with them because you’re authentic. You’ll also have more respect from your readers – and you can’t put a price on that.

I recently wanted to contact someone for this very reason but gave up after ten minutes because I could not find a “contact” page anywhere.

If you’re reading this, and you have yet to create a contact page for your blog or website, I encourage you to stop what you’re doing and go do that now! Here’s a contact form plugin for Wordpress that’s quick and easy to install.

It’s very important that you are accessible for many reasons. Maybe someone just wants to comment on how great your site is. Maybe someone would like to submit a guest article. Or maybe they’d like to contact you for an interview or ask about advertising on your site. These are just a few of many possible reasons.

If you don’t have an “about me” page or “contact me” page, it may seem like you don’t want to be accessible and people may wonder why. Having a way for your audience to contact you (even if it’s through a virtual assistant) establishes a sense of trust and credibility. You could be missing out on a lot by ignoring this.

Over the years, I’ve gradually been getting more and more irritated that those tricky bastards are conning innocent bloggers into thinking their spam comments are real. I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to keep a close eye on the comments that are sneaking past your spam filters.

It used to be that the typical spam comment was loaded with links to shady and downright illegal websites and they were easy to spot.

Now, they’re using one-liners like “Well said.” and “I completely agree!”, or “Great post”. The only link they give is the one in the designated area within the comment form. Some people are just full of wisdom and want to share their brilliant opinions in the form of a few words, but 99% of the time, it’s spam.

Don’t believe me? Just check out the link they provide. If it isn’t a splog or something else just as dodgy, I’ll gladly eat my own words.

Not only are these buttholes leaving clever comments disguised as something a somewhat intelligent person would say, they’re also taking it a few steps further and getting pretty in-depth. They’re generalizing (much like a self-proclaimed psychic would do) and banking on the chances that their comment will apply to your post’s topic. I’ve seen spam comments that were a few paragraphs long and very hard to detect as bullshit.

To be quite honest, when I see a spam comment on someone else’s blog, I get a funny feeling. I can’t tell if that blogger just doesn’t care, or if they’re a bit of a fool. Maybe it’s neither, but either way, you don’t want spam leaving a bad taste in the mouths of your readers so make sure you’re ruthless when it comes to getting rid of that crap.

One liners are a dead giveaway. When in doubt, check the URL and make sure it’s not a spam page. (This is also a reminder to leave thoughtful and bandwidth-worthy posts of your own on other blogs, not just “Thanks for the post”. If you aren’t adding to the conversation, don’t bother commenting.)

Comments that have absolutely nothing to do with the post topic are also a dead giveaway.

If you’re really in doubt, you can copy and paste. If a comment looks a bit fishy to you, copy it and paste it into the search bar of your browser. In other words, “Google it“. If you’re right, you’ll see those exact words on quite a few other unsuspecting blogs.

We can’t beat them, and we certainly shouldn’t join them, but we can at least pummel the shit out of their comments on our own blogs, right?

This has been pissing me off for quite awhile now, but it wasn’t until today that I decided to publish this post that I had started months ago. I updated the following rant to reflect on the latest incident, but I assure you that this happens regularly.

I have a Google Alert set up for one of my websites, BabyTipsOnline.com. People link to my site fairly often in Yahoo Answers so when I see that alert in my email inbox, I always check out the page and see how and why I’m being linked to.

This morning I received this link which pointed to Yahoo Answers where a desperate mother was begging for a way to get her 13-month old daughter weaned off the bottle.

The first answer was “…the only way to stop her BS is to take the bottle away completely. If she cries or whines about it, that’s too bad. She will learn to accept the sippy cup or she will go thirsty. Show her who owns her.”

I read her profile page to find out more about her and why she was such an idiot. Turns out she’s married and trying to conceive.

Here’s a thought lady. Don’t offer advice when you have absolutely no experience and no idea of what you’re talking about!

Another woman explained her story of throwing her son’s bottles out and how he had stopped drinking for three days. THREE DAYS! If that wasn’t bad enough, he didn’t drink milk again for six months. After she details how she tortured her poor baby, she insists that “…the only way to go is cold turkey.” That dumbass should get an award for most insensitive mother EVER.

Yet another “Mother Of The Year” chimed in with her advice to “Reserve milk for meal time and juice for snack time.” Any dentist and nutritionist would slap that one upside the head. Have you ever heard of water? Or how about feeding your child REAL fruit at snack time. Pureed fruit is better than fake juice with added sugar and preservatives.

Now I’m not saying that I’m a perfect mother. Far from it. And I’m sure there will be some mothers who disagree with my opinion about bottle weaning, but I’m smart enough not to offer advice when I have no clue about it, and I’m not dumb enough to post a response just to get people to click on the “thumbs up” button. I also didn’t torture my kids and let them go for three days without anything to drink!

So, what are the two things you can take away from this? (Yes, I finally got around to it if anyone is still reading this far.)

Yahoo Answers is chock full of assholes who think they’re funny and clever, so if you’re looking for real advice, go someplace where people are more qualified to give you an honest and helpful answer.

If you’re one of the losers who post horrible answers that make the original poster feel like shit, go get a life. While you’re getting a life, take into consideration that these are real people you’re messing with. If they act on your “advice”, it can do some real damage.

Of course there are some gems in Yahoo Answers, but you have to spend a good deal of time mining through the “How do I get my girlfriend pregnant?” questions for them. It can also be a great source of free traffic to your own website or blog, but I personally believe it’s a huge waste of time answering questions yourself and using your site as a source.

I enjoy having my website linked to as a source by other people (especially since my articles offer real advice compared to the heap of trash I regularly see in YA), but the links are “nofollow” so I can only enjoy the free traffic and not any link juice.

If you do decide to, or are already using YA to generate traffic, please be careful as to how you’re representing yourself. Your goal is to establish yourself as an expert, so don’t use your website as a source if it’s total rubbish.

Put a lot of thought into your answers. Don’t be a clever prick just to get fans. And don’t forget that your answers may come back to haunt you. If you wouldn’t want your mother or grandmother reading what you wrote, don’t make it public!

Some asswipe who’s name I won’t mention here stole my article almost word for word, including my lame joke, at EzineArticles. Mine is over a year older than his. I remember writing that particular article. I did a few minutes of research and then sat down and wrote it all out from my head, so I know it isn’t an issue of me copying from someone else, and then him copying from me. Or him copying from the same source that I got my information from.

Anyway, I clicked on the “report this article” link on his article page and am looking forward to a reply from EzineArticles. Until then, I’ll try not to be any more immature about it and keep quiet. I just had to rant a bit first.

But just so you know, you can’t steal other people’s content just because it’s on a free article directory. It’s still their content and there are restrictions as to how you can use it. Also, don’t forget that each article directory has their own policies and TOS. Blatantly ripping off someone’s content almost word for word and then submitting it as your own is obviously against any article directory’s policies.

Don’t do it, or you’ll pay for it later. Theft is theft.

Once your subscription is about to expire, these magazines will mail you the standard renewal notice. In the letter they send, they always say the same thing in big red letters.

“RENEW NOW OR PAY MORE LATER”

Well guess what?!

The last time I received that letter, I didn’t renew now! Oh my goodness, I didn’t renew. What to do, what to do? I was going to burn in hell because I didn’t lock in at that special subscription price. Life as I knew it should have been over right?

Luckily for me, my life was spared when I received another letter a few weeks later. This one was especially interesting because it was essentially the same as the previous one, but with a lower price.

A Lower Price!

Those bastards lied to me. I’m not happy now.

I could have believed them with that initial letter and renewed my subscription and fork over 20 big ones. Instead, I called their bluff (cause I’m smart like that) and ended up paying only 12 bucks.

Now, while this was beneficial to me, I can say that I’m not too thrilled with this magazine’s ability to blatantly lie to their loyal customers.

I know this is a marketing tactic from the days of old but is it really ethical?

Whatever that answer is, it doesn’t really matter. The whole point here is that I may not be a loyal customer for long. I would bet there are others who feel the same way. (I hope anyway, or else I’ll feel like giant tool.)

I’m sure you can apply this type of tactic to many online endeavors as well. I’ve seen a lot of things similar to this in email marketing where people offer a program or product for a certain price, then lower it for future customers. (In some cases they’ll even give it away for free.)

What a great way to lose credibility and trust.

To make a long story short, just don’t do this. Be honest. Stick to your word. It’s worth it.

So please allow users to resize frames on your website.