April 14, 2008
Is Comment Kahuna Good Or Evil? (Do Guns Kill People?)
The denizens of Internet Marketing Planet are hammering inboxes this week with another promotion, this time for Jason Potash of "Article Announcer" fame. I have to admit that I haven't been paying much attention to what he's selling, if it's even been disclosed, but I do know that he's been giving away some software called "Comment Kahuna."
Comment Kahuna allows you to search for blogs and posts on a topic. So far, pretty harmless. The feature that's being touted so widely is the ability to search for blogs that aren't using nofollow on their comments. I'm sure we can all see what might be disruptive about that.
Andy Jenkins posted his thoughts on the Stompernet Blog, about the right way for commenters to participate in blog communities, and I couldn't agree more. Comment Kahuna can be used for good, or evil… OK, maybe not evil, just unwise. 
A cool thing happened after he posted - the first comment comes from Andy Beard, who does exactly what Andy Jenkins said commenters should do - he added value to the discussion. Kudos to both Andys for bringing some signal to the web, and not just with this one post.
Mr. Beard and I disagree as often as we agree, but I will argue to the end that he brings something important to the conversation.
Comments on Is Comment Kahuna Good Or Evil? (Do Guns Kill People?) »
Hi Dan,
This is a bit off-topic but I was wondering when the 2008 version of SEO Fast Start was going to be released.
Ant
It will be released in May.
Hi Dan, i tried comment kahuna earlier in the week and didn't find it very useful. Yes it seemed to find a lot of blogs with NF and good PR but the majority of them were unrelated to the keywords that i put in?? I feel this product could get really mis-used with people just posting on unrelated blogs just to get the link back. This would surely cause a lot of spam on those blogs!
I didn't find it especially useful either, but I'm part of a tribe that's very well linked together and I have no cares about nofollow whatsoever.
A lot of people will spam just like they do now. Those who heed Andy's advice will find that their participation has significant long term benefits.
I just downloaded the second release of the software. It seems to find more relevant posts based on the keywords I searched for.
I didn't like the idea that it sometimes pulls in more than one post from the same blog. It can be a good tool if used correctly, but it needs some more work.
Brent
I've used CommentKahuna and FastBlogFinder and at this point I prefer FastBlogFinder as the paid version seems to bring back better results at this time. Of course free is nice and I Jason puts out great products.
Also just stumbled across http://co.mments.com/ which looks like it could be useful in conjunction with either of these programs.
I was thinking about this some more on my daily ice tea run and came up with this rule for myself:
"If I'm not prepared to get *involved* in the conversation I'm making a comment on, DON'T comment."
That's a great way of putting it, Paul.
Anyone who doesn't run an blog would not believe how many junk comments I have to just delete. Someone took the time to type a lot of those in, but they wasted their time and mine, because they just wanted to get a link in.
I'm with you Paul. I find out of every 20 - 30 posts I review only 2 - 3 are something I am interested in following up on. My rule of thumb, if I am not willing to hit the "Subscribe to Comments Button" and follow up, I don't waste my time or the blog owner's time by leaving a comment.
I just checked out this app. Nifty, and in theory it makes sense. It does return some junk. There's something to be said however about the old phrase "If its not going to be done, there is no sense in doing it at all"
White Hat SEO is easy, not simple. Its about consistant quality, not quantity. The SEs, webmasters, surfers and content managers simply won't tolerate useless efforts.
As much as I love duct tape, that approach just won't work in the long run. There's a new one for black hats…they are the duct tape of the SEOs!
Hi,
I'm going through your SEO Fast Start and it asks for feedback here. What I have seen so far looks useful. Thanks. One of the things that bothers me a little is that you seem to be assuming that we are as knowledgeable as you. You give little snippets and expect us to be able to implement them for example:
On Page 40
Here’s what it looks like (in the HTML code) when you use it on a link:
Privacy Policy
That’s it. Simply adding rel=”nofollow” to the link tells the spider not to follow that link. I won’t bother to show you how to do this with JavaScript and Flash. You don’t
need to know about that any more.
I'm sure that is easy "if you know HTML." However, I don't.
Here are a couple links I think should be blocked:
About Us
Condition
So… there are lots of questions:
Do I put it before the first <td? After it? Once I put it in does it kill all links after it or do I need one for each link?
New comment:
Page 2 says:
A companion site (www.seofaststart.com) and a free private membership community (www.whitehatblackbelt.com) to keep you up to date and answer your questions.
If I go to http://www.whitehatblackbelt.com I get:
White Hat Black BeltsThis is a private community for readers of Dan Thies' blog, books, and newsletter.
Sign In
This network is by invitation only. If you have an invitation, click the link in the email to join.
There was a problem signing in
I don't have a password so I don't know how to get in.
Thanks again for the book
Don McKee
Don,
Just subscribe to the newsletter, there's an invitation link for the private site on the opt-in confirmation page, and in every issue of the newsletter.