

Jason Calacanis' Take on Google's Algorithm Change - mikeknoop
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/algorithm-change-launched/#comment-708686

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danudey
So what Jason is saying is that they're actually going to earn their Google
rankings, and thus admitting that before now they hadn't? Now they can say
with a straight face that their results are good, instead of lying about it?

I mean, I had that impression about Mahalo already, but it's weird to see him
admit it's true like that.

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jasonmcalacanis
A little cynical are we? I like that. :-)

We had pages in the past that were not spam, but I would say they were on the
ehow "lighter" side (think < 300 words.

We now are focused on getting experts into our studio and building content
around their expertise. This is about 10-25x more expensive, but I don't see
any other choice. Google is going to smack down anyone who makes them look bad
by trying to rank lower-quality stuff.

We rank only 5th for how to play guitar chords, but ask yourself would rather
use this page: <http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-play-guitar-chords/>

or ones in front of it like:
<http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200e.htm> and
[http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/i...](http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lessons/guitar_chords/index.htm)

out page is clearly the best.... over time google will move us up i'm sure.

big loser in this is ehow for going wide and not deep.

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danudey
Don't think of it as cynicism, it's just my interpretation of what appears to
be a mixed message. You and Mahalo have caught a lot of flack for being a
content farm, a scraper site, an ad-strewn wasteland, etc, and you've denied
those claims, always seeming like your argument was 'Mahalo has good content
and we're totally legit'.

Now the message I get is 'we're getting rid of the junk content and focussing
on making good, solid pages that will make people stop searching and stick
around'.

I suppose my interpretation could be off; I'm not referencing any particular
quote of yours, so I may be remembering 'we don't have junk content' as 'we're
not spamming our content, whether you think it's junk or not'.

To answer your question, the Mahalo page you linked looks great (and the
amount of content is almost overwhelming at first glance). This definitely
isn't the Mahalo I remember, and reading your comments here (and what others
have said about your comments elsewhere), you don't sound like the Jason
Calcanis I've heard so much about. Evil robot twin? Or genuine individual
concerned with making good content people want? Only time will tell, but if
you're not here to harvest all our organs I'm looking forward to seeing what
you have planned.

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mbesto
No, your interpretation isn't off and Jason didn't answer your question.

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jacquesm
I love how this sits right next to "How Organized Spam is Taking Control of
Google's Search Results" on the homepage.

You couldn't make it up.

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staunch
Previously Mahalo was thousands of long tail pages like "How do I make
pepperoni pizza at home?". Now it's going to be thousands of long tail
_videos_ like "How do I make pepperoni pizza at home?"

That doesn't seem very different to me. Maybe I'm missing something?

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lukev
Nothing wrong with it as long as it actually intelligibly describes how to
make a pepperoni pizza at home.

At least video is harder to scrape from another site or auto-generate, which
is where the only real problems are.

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benhedrington
Saw Jason live at DLD talking about "the pivot" it seemed like a genuine
change backed up by some very quality video snippets from the new site... much
different than his internet persona I had read about in the past. He even
apologized to the crowd for "talking too much" when he was younger. A new leaf
for sure.

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iamgoat
Is pivoting the new synergy?

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crux
This is not Jason Calacanis's take on the Google Algorithm Change. This is
just Jason Calacanis spamming for his website. He's saying, 'It's funny you
mention content spammers—let me tell you some more about the NEW Mahalo!'

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junkbit
If it wasn't for TWiT I'd have never of heard of Mahalo.

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lionhearted
My feelings about Jason Calacanis evolved similarly to the way they did about
Gary Vaynerchuk, just slower. With Gary, you see him going
HiEveryBodyThisIsGaryVay-NER-Chuk!-and-this and you're kind of turned off, but
you warm up to him because he's a good guy doing a unique style, and he's got
serious chops/substance beneath the style.

Similar for me with Calacanis. It was Peldi from Balsamiq linking to an
article of his talking about how to deal with journalists smartly that turned
my opinion around, and since then I've come to respect the guy a whole lot.
He's got a strong style that rubs people the wrong way at times, but he's a
super savvy businessman and also seems like a genuinely helpful person.

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tptacek
The business he actually runs turns off many people more than his personal
style.

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arctangent
Agreed. In everything I have read about him it seems perfectly clear that he's
happy to game search engine ranking algorithms to place highly in their
results. Moreover, driving volume to his site(s) in this way is his main
concern.

But unfortunately for the people coming to his sites there really isn't all
that much content to see. Perhaps this has changed recently - if so, I'd love
to see an example (just one!) of a page on Mahalo which gives better
information than Wikipedia (for example)...

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michaelbuckbee
Here is a quite lengthy Mahalo GTA4 walkthrough that includes a bunch of
videos as well:

<http://www.mahalo.com/grand-theft-auto-4-walkthrough/>

Here is the GTA4 Wikipedia page:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV>

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jasonmcalacanis
Our video game team is amazing.

We are making 900 high-quality videos a week. 105 people at Mahalo now, and we
will add 100 more this year. We should be able to hit 3k videos a week this
year.

The next wave of videos we create you guys will actually be using.... so I'm
looking forward to hearing what people think of our lynda.com-like stuff. :-)

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btipling
Do you ever think that maybe Mahalo isn't working out and perhaps it is time
to give it another go with a different product? It's good to evolve but at
some point, throw in the towel. I'd say the same for Seesmic. It's admirable,
but at some point after many reinventions, you've just got to step back and
examine honestly if you're wasting talent and time on a losing ticket. There's
very little about Mahalo that makes it attractive other than the great design.
When does anyone say to themselves "Hrm I bet Mahalo has this information" or
"I should check Mahalo.com." However if you do plan to stick it out until
you're bankrupt you might want to think about employing librarians. Helping
resolving information needs is what they are best at.

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jasonmcalacanis
Well, did you watch my talk about pivoting from DLD? In that talk I outline
how Mahalo's human-powered search vision got us to the top 400 sites, but that
it wasn't growing and the users wanted more how to/instructional content.

We iterated, and mahalo is a top 200 site that also gets 1M+ views a day on
YouTube. yes, 365M views of our 23k videos every year.

I do think your question "i should check Mahalo" is an EXCELLENT one. Human-
powered search doesn't have that draw, but I think _free_ instructional videos
will.

If you wanted to speak Russian or make perfect grilled cheese or solve a video
game you would do well to come to Mahalo.com.

Direct traffic is the real test of a sites worth... and we're very focused on
growing that with high-quality instruction.

We have tons of money and tons of revenue... we can't go bankrupt if we can
easily make a profit can we? :-)

Talk to me in one year and we'll be in the top 100 sites and have 100M+ views
a month on YouTube. :-)

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btipling
That sounds pretty positive actually. I'm glad that it's working out for you.
My impression was looming disaster, I was wrong. :P

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kul
Kudos for this pivot, the video is worth watching. Data driven decision making
at its finest.

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mikeyp
Brilliant!

