Bottom Feeders On The Internet
What is a bottom feeder? A bottom feeder is: A fish or other animal that feeds on the bottom of a body of water.A bottom feeder is: One that feeds low on the food chain; a scavenger.
A bottom feeder is: An opportunist who profits from the misfortunes of others.
A bottom feeder is: A low or despicable person.
The internet is a haven for bottom feeders. The low and despicable opportunists who feed low on the food chain are so common, and it is so easy for them to hide, disappearing into one hole, and then poking their heads out elsewhere to do more damage.
I like the definition that says "one that feeds low on the food chain; a scavenger". There are a couple examples of these internet scavengers that really annoy me.
The first is the people who buy up domain names for no other purpose than to sell them at a profit to someone who desperately wants the name. For example, let's say that you've found out that a new business is starting up called "Harvey's Goldfish", and that they want the domain "harveysgoldfish.com". So, before they get a chance to buy up the domain, you buy it (and several of its variations) at a low low price.
Then when Harvey tries to register the domain, he can't, because you own it. So he looks up your contact info, and gives you a call.
"How much is this domain worth to you?" you ask.
He names a price. You counter his offer, and you dicker back and forth until finally he agrees to your price, and you walk away with thousands of dollars.
And in the process, you have performed no valuable service, and you have provided no useful product. This makes you a scavenger. A bottom feeder.
Personally, I think it's despicable.
The second kind of bottom feeder builds bottom feeder websites; it's a kind of website springing up all over the place these days; no matter where you look, you find another one...It's easy to build one of these bottom feeder sites, if you've got some programming skill...here's what you do:
1. Go to a keyword selector tool to find out what search phrases people are commonly using these days.
2. Spider the net (or steal results from google/yahoo/msn/etc.) to find pages that appear to have something to do with that subject.
3. Display all those page titles and their description tags on a single page. The result is that you have a page just filled to overflowing with phrases and terms related to the original search phrase. This means that when someone searches for that phrase, they find you, not all those sites you found.
4. Now put all those page results halfway down your page in small text, and splash google ads at the top, so everyone who comes to your site, instead of finding the pages your spider found, clicks an ad and therefore provides you income.
Bottom feeder.
They, without providing any valuable service, insert themselves as a middle-man between the searcher and the legitimate sites.
Of course, this kind of bottom feeding activity will, in the long run, be its own downfall. The thing about these kinds of sites is, no one links to them. Why would you link to a site which provides you with no useful content?
And since no one links to the site, it will never gain popularity. What you see is what you get. Unlike the really well designed and useful sites, which increase in popularity month by month and year by year.
So be a bottom feeder. I don't care. Sooner or later, you live long enough to regret it.
Posted On Dec 6, 2005 at 12:25 AM
On Dec 6, 2005 Lino Evgueni wrote: Hi Doug, I also have a blog. I was trying to write something about how to make math fun for kids and thought about the number 142857. I googled it and found your website, so I added a link from my post since you provided a great explanation of the "magic" of that number. I hope you don't mind.
Doug Replied: Hi Lino! Believe it or not, I had already stumbled across your blog, because some people jumped from your site to mine, and it showed up in my site statistics! I visited your blog, and knew just enough Spanish to get the gist of what you were saying.
I'm always glad when people find my sites useful enough to link to them. Thank you!
On Dec 6, 2005 Laura wrote: I heard a local Christian band member talking about how someone did the exact same thing to them - only they told them that if they didn't buy their domain name back, it would still be there, just with porn on it
Yeah, it's sad that people make a living off this kind of thing - but I guess there will be people like this in just about every area of business, not just the web.On Dec 7, 2005 Doug wrote: I was just looking over the comments, and realized, Lino helped prove my point in this post; provide useful content in your website, and people will link to it, making the site more and more popular over time...
And in case anyone is wondering what page he's referring to, you can find it here:
142857 - My Favorite Number
And while you're at it...
142857 Multiplication Calculator
On Dec 12, 2005 Doug wrote: Jonathan discovered this interesting article for me:
Caught On The Web
|
Doug's Random ThoughtsEverything from Soup to Nuts,And Maybe Even More! ABOUT ME Current PostsBlog Is Moving...Emergency Room Last Entry Join The Chorus Jeorge Sings A Hymn 
|