The Next Google “Slap” for Social Bookmarkers

Google’s Jeff Waltz says…

“We are working on strategies to level the playing field, effectively bringing back natural search patterns enjoyed in the pre-social bookmarking days. For webmasters who use social media responsibly, this is nothing to worry about - we will be targeting mainly a small minority of prolific bookmarkers with a new algorithm that looks at linking patterns over time.

Webmasters who rely heavily on bookmarking their own sites to gain traffic will likely see a drop in pagerank before the end of 2008, and we will be working closely with two major social bookmarking sites to find a solution that will have no detrimental effect on the average internet user.”

There is some insightful discussion of this at The Promote Your Site Blog

It seems if you are activly involved in actually socializing you will be OK. If you are abusing the system your site will be penalized.

I agree something has to be done and it is reasonable to expect this. When I run some searches the results lean toward social sites too much.

My experience in social bookmarking shows me the best way to get the most out of the social networks is to be actively involved. I enjoy my time spent there as well.

Business in reality needs to have a healthy dose of feedback. To get known as a marketer is a good thing. The relationships I have built are definitely good for my business. Being in contact with people and seeing what they are about and what is important to them.