Mahalo Sells Corporate SEO Services?

http://www.seobook.com/more-proof-jason-calacanis

by jfornear • 16 years ago

73 43 16 years ago

jfornear• 16 years ago

I always did find it funny that the CEO of a so-called "human-powered search engine" could get away with claiming to not understand SEO.

staunch• 16 years ago

The fantasy version of Mahalo is that some people (your grandma) would use Mahalo as their interface to Google. Mahalo would intercept the top n% of queries with better results, and pass the rest on to Google.

The reality is that getting anyone to switch to Mahalo as their destination search engine is nigh impossible. So, they go back to their real plan: create a crappy Wikipedia-like site for tabloid content and rely on SEO to get page views and fill those with ads. Use the human powered search as a legitimate cover. But that's just my opinion.

bonsaitree4• 16 years ago

There's smart, shrewd, duplicitous, deceptive, and finally downright dishonest. I don't know the man personally, but it's my opinion that Mr. Calacanis's business practices moved into that final category some time ago.

It's actually really sad. I wonder what's driven him to this level. Greed? Ego? 3rd party investor pressure? Simply not wanting to ever have his name associated with a repeat failure?

Especially amongst the entrepreneur crowd which he espouses to represent, truthful "honest" failure itself is looked upon less harshly than shady "gamed success".

Though in retrospect totally full of late 90s Internet hype, I remember being inspired by his Charlie Rose interview back in the "Silcon Alley" days of NYC:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9192442030075924272#...

What happened to THAT Jason?

numair• 16 years ago

He moved to LA.

jasonmcalacanis8• 16 years ago

LA is really nice..... like New York City with better weather and a beach. :-)

joez• 16 years ago

I can't speak to the morality of Mahalo and Jason's hand in it but I think since there are attacks on his person that I should bring to light some of the positives he's done for the startup community.

Techcrunch50

This Week In Startups (including encounter with Keiretsu Forum)

bonsaitree4• 16 years ago

Unfortunately, as is the case with Mahalo, when one is both the CEO and "public face" of a corporation's brand, it is difficult partition the two relms outside of clearly personal matters (e.g. health, friends, family, etc.). A classic case being Martha Stewart.

In some instances, with morality and 'key executive personnel' insurance clauses in compensation agreements, they are, in fact, inextricably contractually coupled. As the saying goes, "it comes with the territory" and I'm sure is adequately reflected in his ownership of the company and current compensation.

Also, FWIW, I don't believe this was his original plan (e.g. Mahalo Daily's original format hosted by Veronica Belmont). Nevertheless, that's been the situation for years and Jason, and his board, have apparently seen no good reason to change it.

jasonmcalacanis8• 16 years ago

Thanks for that. :-)

I also feel that Mahalo falls into that category and I don't understand what the problem is with us explaining the SEO value of our Q&A/knowledge platform.

It's excellent at white-hat SEO, just like Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia are.

volida3• 16 years ago

I am surprised you fall in the trap of this guy who attacks Calacanis to change or shape a bad image of him. I don't know anyone of them, and it's obvious this is a personal attack.

Who is this guy who will tell someone else how to run their company?

bonsaitree4• 16 years ago

With regards to personal attacks, see my reply below.

No management directives were given in the original article, nor my comment. For all we know, this "business model" is being forced upon Mahalo given the present economic climate.

Although I think it unlikely, Jason himself may not feel he has any other option and is being forced by the other investors in the company down this revenue path.

I urge you to read the original article and the previously posted comments on this thread for the full context of Mahlo's behavior and Mr. Calacanis' response. It's the double-speak and clearly disingenuous ignorance of his response which is the crux of the matter.

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

In this specific presentation Mahalo is advertising a platform for how-to guides and answer services that can be used on other sites - how is that wrong? Google is about producing good content that's relevant and useful. Mahalo does that along with the right linking structure in place. If I was paying someone to help create content+an engine around it I'd find SEO to be an important sales point worth touching on.

aaronwall12• 16 years ago

It is not that providing SEO services is wrong or bad. The point is publicly Jason claims ignorance toward SEO whereas privately SEO is the cornerstone of his sales pitch.

It shows is public claims of ignorance toward SEO are (at best) dishonest.

jasonmcalacanis8• 16 years ago

Correct!

We make great content and tools for companies and they happen to be excellent at SEO.

I love SEO and Aaron is just going insane because he thinks I am a better SEO than he is.

Now, I don't think I'm better at SEO than Aaron.. in fact, most of what I've learned is from reading his blog and GREY Wolf's!

So, I don't understand why he is so full of venom for me when I always give him credit as a great inspiration for me!

aaronwall12• 16 years ago

>>Aaron is just going insane because he thinks I am a better SEO than he is<<

When you back out the VC influx of cash I am not so sure. :D

I think you are great at public relations, but I didn't have to flame people or take funding to build huge traffic streams.

I started out with lots of debt, no revenues, and a credit card and grew from there. And I only have ~ 6.5 years online...imagine my public relations Qi I will develop by the time I am a ripe old man like yourself :D

I mean...you're like 40!!!

minalecs2• 16 years ago

I don't quite understand the issue, but I think the conflict being , is that because google loves content and backlinks , he had first built a service under the disguise of just being a legitimate human powered search, and can now leverage his network to give credibility to other links for the highest price ? Can anybody else provide more context ?

aaronwall12• 16 years ago

The other non-trivial relevant issue was that at launch time he panned Squidoo as spam

flamed Squidoo in the mainstream press so often that he got them penalized http://searchengineland.com/search-spam-fight-mahalo-1-squid... (all so he could promote Mahalo)

....

fast forward the clock a couple years and Jason is operating well outside of Google's guidelines, massively auto-generating scraped content web pages. The auto-generating scraped pages are far worse than anything Squidoo ever did.

Jason publicly claims an ignorance of SEO to act like he doesn't know any better, then inside his corporate sales material the key selling point is SEO.

How can he both be ignorant of SEO and use it as his key selling point?

jasonmcalacanis8• 16 years ago

We are well within Google's guidelines.

We are noindexing the pages that have short content and are older than 30 days. If they are less than 30 days old and get more than 50 views we build them out.

That's just a smart strategy, and there is nothing black hat of it.

Also, 90% of our traffic comes from Q&A, walkthroughs and howto articles that are REALLY DEEP in terms of content.

lmkg• 16 years ago

There's a lot of context. The guy who made this site publically called out SEO's as scumbags, then used the dirtiest SEO tricks in the book to make his site rank well. When called out on it, he claims that he doesn't know SEO. Apparently now he's selling his expertise in this area he claims not to know anything about.

minalecs2• 16 years ago

I guess to summarize, the only thing he did wrong was to be misleading about his exact knowledge on the topic of SEO. The thing is, you can start a business, and hire expertise. Thats not such a bad thing.

FluidDjango• 16 years ago

Is it possible that JC underrepresents the value of his services - which purport they are "Helping people find information they can trust"?

https://mahalo-press.s3.amazonaws.com/MahaloPressKit.pdf :

Perhaps Mahalo will (at no extra charge) help steer people away from secret pre-release details about Apple mobile devices.

aaronwall12• 16 years ago

After enough reporters get fired for listening to Jason, I am sure the market will work out that inefficiency ;)

alain940402• 16 years ago

Nothing shady in that PDF. Looks like someone is holding a grudge.

aaronwall12• 16 years ago

Didn't claim the PDF was shady...claimed that lying about being ignorant about SEO while selling SEO services was shady.

Big difference.

Tichy• 16 years ago

Who cares if he is ignorant about SEO or not? I don't see the big deal. And even if he is ignorant, he could have employees who do the SEO stuff.

Mahalo Sells Corporate SEO Services?

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