Thursday, July 22, 2010

Techtarget and Search Exchange -- Heavy and Cumbersome

While searching for some tips on the potential possibility of managing a tiny vmware-server v1 machine with a temporary VCenter (4) server, I stumbled on yet another of those Expert Exchange-type sites:  Techtarget, it looks to be called.  Specifically, I found my way to their SearchVMware sub-site.

The routine is typical of them all:  tease you with a paragraph, and lock anything useful behind a paywall.  If this didn't present a few concerns, I wouldn't be thinking about it a moment past that, and thus wouldn't have a thing to write about.
  1. What are the search engine implications - specifically, bannination for baiting and switching the search terms with different (reduced) content?  I seem to remember a bunch of similar schemes were shut down a decade ago.  While those guys were stuffing unrelated crap keywords in white-on-white text in the hopes of luring more irrelevant searchers to their site, what these guys may be doing - luring searchers with one set of data, presenting something much worse - does appear to be a sale of their reputation under a false pre-text.
  2. What's the best way to config a black hole for these useless sites?  They offer no value to me, and I'd like to ensure I never, ever even have these sites show up in my results.  It's a time waster, really, and I'd like my internet to exclude all the baiters and switchers.
I guess, really, I don't want to remove them completely.  Since I'd only ever, really consider going to sites I consider to be somewhat shady as an absolute last resort, I think that I'd be okay if their search results turned up on the very last page of my searches.  That way if I don't find what I'm looking for on the Internet, I can search off the Internet as well.  It's like Broadway and Off-Broadway -- or, in this case, off-off-off-off-off-Broadway.