Why Does Google Hate Link Manipulation?

Anyone who knows the Google Web Spam team well, knows that they all have a huge distaste for link manipulation. In my opinion, it is more than just a distance for some of the web spam team members, specifically Matt Cutts.

Matt Cutts, a great guy, Google engineer since January 2000, has a strong, deep, gut wrenching distaste for link manipulation, in my opinion. Where do I get this opinion from? I don’t think from our conversations but from watching Matt write and communicate with webmasters on link issues since early 2003.

Let me pull out one recent post by Matt Cutts that demonstrates it. A Sphinn thread, Matt writes:

Todd, what about a query like [symptoms of a heart attack]? The searcher wants accurate results ASAP, and might not have enough time or patience to research the subject thoroughly. We think about searches like this and issues like this all the time, which is why Google may come across as humorless when we talk about some linking issues.I thought Eric made a pretty compelling argument. When you search, you don’t want a search engine that is “fooled” by lower-quality links. And if you’re trying to compete for search rankings fairly, you don’t want a site that takes short cuts to do better than your site. That’s why it’s so helpful to have great content first and foremost and then promote that content well as opposed to just building links to low-quality content.

Just read that. Do people search for such things? I would think so. I don’t think heart attacks are sudden always and I hear many people get them without knowing, they just feel discomfort. So Matt takes this stuff beyond seriously, but sometimes, I feel, personally. Imagine, spending eight plus years working at a company to build out a search experience that provides as much help to the searcher as possible. Now, imagine you have people come in and try to manipulate that? In my opinion, it would take a strong man to not take that somewhat personally. Of course, Googlers can’t take it personally, but in some cases - it can be hard not to.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

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LittleBigPlanet Finishing Up Alpha Phase

According to a recent blog post on Media Molecule, the highly anticipated LittleBigPlanet will be finishing up the alpha phase of testing soon.

“We’ve been slaving away pushing LittleBigPlanet toward the Alpha stage of its development cycle. Basically, this means all the cool stuff we said will be in there should be playable, even if it isn’t pretty enough to release. The game seems to change every day at the moment and it is very exciting to be able to sit down and play what feels more and more like a complete experience.”

LittleBigPlanet is a PS3 community based game which encourages players to create their own levels and objects and to then share this fully customizable environment with friends. It is expected to be released sometime September.

Source here

Finished Installing Windows Vista SP1 ? Now Remove All The Junk Files

When you install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on your computer, the SP1 installer will not remove the older versions of Vista files from the hard drive. This is because the older files may be required in case you decide to uninstall SP1 later from the system.

Naturally, these files occupy important disk space. If you are satisfied with the performance of Windows Vista SP1 and unlikely to remove it later, why not reclaim some disk space by removing all the older Vista files.

There are no manual steps involved. Just open your Windows command prompt and type vsp1cln.exe (short for Vista SP1 Cleaner). It takes less than a minute to execute.

*vsp1cln.exe is added to your Windows Vista System folder after you install Vista SP1.

This will make Windows Vista Service Pack 1 permanent on this computer. All the older files are deleted now and your hard disk has tons of extra space for other important files like videos and photos.

You computer need not be connected to the Internet for running the Vista SP1 cleaner tool. And you won’t be able to remove Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later.
Source here