15 years
Thanks, you have presented a good case against it, I left my thoughts on the blog.
Google Sidewiki Threatens Review Website (and Hostels' Websites)
Hostel Trends and News
I've written an article on one of my blogs about a new Google product called Sidewiki:
Google Sidewiki Is GOOGjacking the World Wide Web
If Google Sidewiki takes off, it's going to have a major effect on all kinds of review sites (e.g., Hostelworld, Hostelbookers, Tripadvisor, igougo), as well as small-business websites (e.g., hostels).
Basically, what Sidewiki does is create a sidebar in the visitor's browser that exists on top of your webpage. It allows the visitor to leave comments/reviews on top of any website. Those comments/reviews are controlled only by Google, which means it will be nearly impossible to have negative comments/reviews removed.
It may be possible to remove blatantly libelous comments, but what if a competitor writes something like this on top of your webpage, or your page on hostelworld.com:
The major effect that Sidewiki may have on review websites is that it hijacks users and user generated content from the review websites. It's much easier for a visitor to leave a comment on Sidewiki than to log in and create an account on a review website. Booking engines and review sites will start having their reviews posted on Google, and not on their own websites. Hostel, and other small businesses, will start to have reviews posted on top of their own websites, with no way to control the content displayed on top of their own websites.
For more information on the problems with Sidewiki, see this blog post.
- Comments
15 years
Pretty interesting. We run our website with wordpress, and there's already been a plugin developed to defeat Sidewiki.
15 years
There are a couple of "Sidewiki Destroyer" scripts available that work by appending URL fragments to the end of each page's URL. I'm not sure how safe that is from an SEO perspective (even though Google doesn't index URL fragments), but one possible solution is to only load the Sidewiki Destroyer scripts if the User-agent shows that the user has Google Toolbar installed.
Here are the scripts:
I'm testing this code that only loads the script if the user visits with Google Toolbar.
[CODE]
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