SOPA, GoDaddy & What YOU Can Do
By now you have likely heard the uproar regarding SOPA. If you haven’t it is highly suggested that you read about it because it affects EVERYONE who uses the Internet or has a website – it’s very troubling to say the least.
Here are just a few articles on the topic:
- The official bill H.R. 3261
- Wikipedia Explanation
- TechCrunch
- Mashable
So how does GoDaddy fit into all of this? Well, they’re the one internet company that is PRO-SOPA. Here is their official stance: http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/go-daddys-position-on-sopa/
Gizmodo has a very strongly worded article on GoDaddy’s position. One of the things I’ve always hated about GoDaddy are their totally inappropriate commercials that run during sporting events in which children are watching. It almost made me sick to my stomach when I read this portion of their “stance” on SOPA:
And, I spend a great deal of my working (and non-working) hours each day working to keep the Internet a better and safer place, especially for children.
What a bunch of crap.
If you recall, in early 2011, Bob Parson’s owner of GoDaddy was proudly photographed next to a gunned-down elephant (with gun in hand); this outraged many people at the time. Recently, they were found to be placing keywords related to their own services within the footer of websites purchased through their “Website Tonight” product all unknown to the website owner.
If you haven’t had it by now my friends, this last item should be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Ashton Kutcher posted today: I am moving my domains off of @Godaddy due to their support for #SOPA.
In a post at Reddit, over 100 domain holders who have accounts at GoDaddy are said to be transferring their domains.
Ben Huh who owns the network of Cheezburger sites, and who has over 1,000 domains registered with GoDaddy stated that he will transfer registrar’s if GoDaddy doesn’t change it’s stance.
And slowly but surely, I am moving as well.
I highly suggest http://NameCheap.com – PLUS, they’re even offering a discount on transfers. They posted this on Facebook today:
Unlike the competition, we oppose SOPA because we believe in internet freedom. Transfer your domains over for $6.99 with code SOPASucks. Offer valid for COM NET ORG INFO and BIZ TLDs.
Here are their instructions on how to transfer a domain from GoDaddy to Namecheap:
http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/876/83/how-to-transfer-a-domain-from-godaddy
Here are 6 things that you can do to help stop SOPA.
And Ben Parr is offering additional alternatives. They including calling and emailing your representative on the day that Congress reconvenes which is January 18, 2012.
I hope that this post has helped to inform you just a little bit and gave you some options as to what you can do.
Long Live the Internet!
*** UPDATE ***
A press release issued by GoDaddy today says they no longer support SOPA. A little too late?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/23/godaddy-no-longer-supports-sopa/
http://mashable.com/2011/12/23/breaking-godaddy-no-longer-supports-sopa/
Watch Those Ads on Your Site
Filed under: Google, Marketing, Ranking, Traffic
Recently Google’s Matt Cutts mentioned at PubCon that Google will be taking a long, hard look at websites that have lots of ads above the fold, or in other words, sites that require you to scroll down past the ads in order to get to the content.
I don’t think that all of the details have been released on this as of yet (and don’t know that they will be), but Matt made it clear that if a site has an abundance of ads above the fold, it could be construed as spam.
That being said, I’d take a look at your sites and make sure that you don’t have AdSense ads taking up most of the space at the top of your content; if anything just to be safe. I know that this is a super-short post but there’s really not a whole lot more information about this (yet). I’m sure that as this algorithm change starts to take effect, that there will be more information on it.
Google Getting More Lenient with their Ads?
I just had to share this! Was reading an email today in Gmail and noticed an ad on the right hand side of the page (see below). Now, Google over the last year or so has really gotten strict with their advertisements; so much so that they’ve booted a lot of affiliates out permanently, and have really cracked down on questionable language.
That said, wonder how this made it through?
