How do we at Mahalo determine which recommended links will make the cut, and be included in a search results page?

Let’s look at iPhone as an example.

1. Accepted: The link for Apple’s iPhone ads recommended by Andru Edwards shows exactly the kind of link we want to include. It’s something our users will probably be searching for and it’s from a highly respected source.

Figure 1: We accepted http://apple.com/iphone/ads/

2. No action: iPhone Blogger is still in the Recommended Links area. It hasn’t been promoted to the page yet because, while it looks good, it hasn’t been around for very long. We’ll need to see how it evolves, and if others recommend it, before we decide whether to move it to the page.


Figure 2: We took no action on: http://iphoneblogger.com/

3. Banned: We banned iPhone2Win for several reasons. First, and most simply, it felt spammy. After a little research, we discovered it had a very low Alexa ranking. It asks for people to provide a lot of information, but doesn’t give a lot in return. The main site, http://www.gibtshier.com, has an unmodified web template with no information about the company. The company information link on the contest page gives no phone number, just a mailing address for a direct marketing company in Austria. If it asks users for more data than it’s willing to give out and does not have a solid reputation, we don’t want to recommend it to our users. Therefore, this link was banned.


Figure 3: We banned: http://iphone2win.gibtshier.com

We hope this gives you more insight into Mahalo’s link choices. If you’ve got any questions, please ask them in the comments. Mahalo!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 9:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.