2000 Bloggers: Helpful, Harmless, or a Problem?

(UPDATE FEB. 6: Technorati took action to nullify the ranking effect of 2000 bloggers, and Tino Buntic decided -- wisely, I think -- to take the project down. Read more...)

Some of you may have already seen Tino Buntic's 2000 Bloggers meme currently making the rounds online. It's an interesting project, featuring a large photomontage of all the bloggers connected so far. (More on this project.) I was included on this list, which I take as a compliment.

Basically, this project is about making a diverse collection of bloggers (from the A-list to the unknown) more visible -- a laudable goal. And, undoubtedly, it's certainly raised the profile of Tino's blog -- and that's fine. I've got nothing against self-promotion.

However, I have to wonder whether there might be an unintended downside to this project...

Specifically, Tino's photomontage includes links to all the included blogs. He's allowing and encouraging people to syndicate his photomontage on their sites. Many bloggers, such as Branding Your Blog, are doing just that.

This means that there's an awful lot of identical cross-linking happening online.  And I can see it happening. Every time I check my feed reader (I have several search feeds for my name and URLs, so I can find out when I'm being discussed or linked to online), I see a slew of new links from new people who have posted the 2000 bloggers photomontage.

Normally, inbound links are a great thing for traffic and search engine placement. And of course, there's some social networking potential here too. However, tons of identical links from multiple sites might look like link farming to Google and other major search engines.

Link farming is a problem, since it's often employed to game the search engines to artificially boost the rankings of involved sites. Since its a problem, search engines have devised sophisticated algorithms to identify it. Here's what Wikipedia currently says about that (emphasis added):

"Search engines countered the link farm movement by identifying specific attributes associated with link farm pages and filtering those pages from indexing and search results. In some cases, entire domains were removed from the search engine indexes in order to prevent them from influencing search results."

That's right: some sites deemed to be engaged in link farming have been stricken from search engines -- the ultimate blow to findability.

Therefore, I'm wondering whether the 2000 blogger project -- however well-intended -- might inadvertently harm the bloggers it seeks to help.

I obviously need to research this more, and I could be wrong. But since I don't have time for that research at the moment (slammed with paying work, folks), I'd like to get some discussion and further investigation going on this topic.

What do you think? Even better, what do you know? Please comment below.

Comments

[DrumsNWhistles]

It's concerning me a little bit, too. I've been watching the incoming links and many, many (maybe too many) are coming through the syndication of the photo montage.

I'd like to think that before removing a domain entirely for link farming Google (and Technorati, for that matter) would analyze this thing and possibly discount incoming links from this particular meme without barring a domain completely.

Karoli (Drumsnwhistles)

[Tino Buntic]

Hi Amy, those are valid concerns. I didn't even intend to have the page re-copied. People started doing it and even more asked me for the code. So I gave it to them. But I don't think you need to worry about Google considering the links bad. If it did, Google wouldn't index the main 2000 page but it does. Also, an authority site linked to me (Photobucket) making it legitimate.

[Bob Glaza]

Hi Amy - I too am one of Tino's 2000 and echo your concerns. Figure the worse that could happen is Google takes my blog away - which they gave me anyway. I also applaud the creative flash that sparked his project. And the conversations he's been able to build must be rewarding. I'm a learner in the blog/social networking community. It seems links are the currency for measurement/rank. Maybe thats been the case forever? I hope the currency never turns to $$$ because I'm out :)
It might be some will see being one of the 2K as a compliment - like you (and me), some will find it a pain as in "why did I ever jump on this wagon?", and some will figure out a way to "game" the system. Just like life! I've read your blog for the past year and like what you do. Thanks for adding to the right conversation and the fun!

[Robert Kingston]

Amy - Thanks for the cautionary warning. I've since updated my post without the 'link plantation'. By the sounds of it, Google could associate us with the online drug cartels of the world, pushing viagra onto people like paracetamol.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what eventuates from this. I'll admit it was shortsighted of me to post the 2000 bloggers - even if it did throw me an extra 200 visitors per day.

Let's hope Google didn't see me post it...

[Elaine Vigneault]

Your post is interesting if all the 2000 Bloggers project was were links. But it's not. It's a quilt of faces. And now it's even more ( www.2kbloggers.com ). If Google and Technorati can't keep up with the way bloggers use the web then what value are they to us?

Don't get me wrong, they certainly have a lot of power and could lessen the range of our voices if they wanted to. But really, is the fear that a couple giant corporations might punish us with bad rankings for doing something awesome enough to make us stop?

Are the majority of the 2000 Bloggers really even worried about our ranks? We're mostly C-listers already. Only my friends and family read my blog now. They're not going to stop if Technorati makes me sit in the corner on time out.

Oh and by the way, Technorati has made it clear they're not going to punish anyone for participating.