Meryl's Notes Blog

Disclaimer: This is not an April Fool’s Joke. It’s a real issue. Also, I’m a member of Marqui’s Blogosphere Program.

I was shocked to hear about WordPress having over 100,000 articles hidden in the backyard to improve its Google rank. Several have called this spamming, but nuh-uh… it’s not spamming. I won’t go into why I don’t consider it spamming because others have already covered the topic. Kingblogger Kottke points to the Waxy article that explains what WordPress did.

Corante lumps Marqui with WordPress as if they’re doing the same thing. Get real! The two did not do same thing. This is comparing apples to oranges. WordPress did it behind our backs while Marqui was up front about its payblogger program.

Why did WordPress do this? It already has a link in its template so anyone who doesn’t modify the template has a WordPress link in his blog. This alone coupled with its frequent mentions in blogs, geeky Web sites, and articles should be more than enough to make it Google Rank Happy.

Google likes to keep things fair and that’s why the company continuously changes its ranking rules. Guess what? Google is removing all of the WordPress articles from its results. So if Google does this, it obviously thinks this is unacceptable.

If WordPress is preparing to hire employees and convert to a business, I have no problem with that. The problem is the behind-the-scenes stuff. Why not be open about the articles and indicate its wishes to become a company? When MovableType became Six Apart and moved to a paid model, I didn’t have a problem with that either. It is how such companies handle the move that caused problems.