EF "Unethical"?

This was already hashed out once. Can we PLEASE drop it already. There were a lot of ugly things said, in the end we got our answers. You can read the other threads on this and get all caught up, but please please please can we just not beat a dead horse.

I remember reading a reply from NeuronGeek noting that EF did this to make their link-checking system easier to implement and maintain, so that links could be verified to (among other things) not be malevolent.

Yes, I've got my blog, but I like to think that there's enough useful and original content on there to let people find it without throwing a hissy fit about every missed SEO opportunity. Of course I don't get income from it, and so as a hobbyist I probably have a different outlook than someone who wants every click possible.

This isn't the kind of thing that affects me as a customer, so I don't really care. I had a look at the two other sites he suggested as alternatives. No "actual size" tool, which is a must for online sex toy shopping. One listing I looked at, didn't even give any measurements! The brands are sometimes left out entirely. No detailed search parameters. No communities, no quality reviews. Before, EF I never thought I could spend so much time on an online store, without buying anything. Is there any other site that even comes close to the quality we have here? It's gonna take a lot more than some vague talk about link reciprocity for me to leave EF.

I would be more concerned about this if EF were just another online sex store. As it stands, though, EF has shown themselves to be conscientious and invested in their community of customers, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt...if there is any doubt.

All it looks like to me is some douchebag trying to make his own website look good at the expense of Eden. The technique he's using of throwing technical scripting and HTML in there is just to confuse you and throw you off course.

I just find it hilarious that he thinks his thread is actually going to "hurt" Eden Fantasys.

I noticed this too! I ignored it!

I'm a web developer and I can fully understand what he says. I personally think EF does a pretty damn good job regarding its SEO. The technologies they use are legit because they are not spammers. If they were, there wouldn't be products, nor FREE products. They reward us well in exchange of our links. They won't want us to do anything for them for free. So I don't see why this man is upset.. I didn't read the full article because I got bored of analyzing the smallest parts.

Anyway, any kind of advertising is advertising. So if somebody doesn't like EF and doesn't want it get better then it's better they keep it to themselves because writing about EF is an advertisement, either way. So they would do EF more good than harm in the end. Well it's not a problem for us

Personally I find pyramid like MLM systems bad, like FLP (1st hit in google..). But they are legit too! They use some very awkward techniques exploiting personal experiences and friends of people. That's bad, this isn't.

from the sounds of it, the gentleman probably hasn't actually done any work for them i.e. reviewing, affiliate, mentor, etc. i've posted negative reviews and eden never edited them, unless it was grammar stuff. (i think that's what he is referring to).

I had a headache after the first paragraph. All his mumbo-jumbo tech talk means nothing to me. We do get something in exchange for our reviews so I'm not quite sure what he is babbling about.

I find it amusing that he feels traditional society should know about the techy stuff... not the fact that this is a huge SEX SHOP hahahaaa

As a web dev myself, the beef boils down to this:

"Links" on EF/Sexis/etc don't work like regular links. They send a note back to EF about what link is being clicked on, THEN it redirects to the new site. It's and extremely very common, wholly ethical, and (should be) encouraged practice, because increases site usability and effectiveness if the admins know how their site is being used and what links are being clicked.

It seems they're trying to throw out three pages of javascript code to effectively say: "See, this is some high-level stuff that's going on! Trust me, these guys are crooked!"

Riiiiiiiiight... carry on

So this is all a lot of

EF: "Hey, look at this! We've found a technical method to prevent linkspam, which also provides us statistical data about how our site is being used!"

Butthurt: "HNURR! These links break if I go out of my way to break them and they don't help my pagerank! HNURR!"

So start a twitter account and drop a new link to one of your blogs every time you say something. You'll get an even better pagerank boost out of that than you would have for one or two reciprocal links using a traditional system. I've manipulated pagerank myself in order to get my social media profiles in the top 5 when I do a vanity search (before that, there was a news article about a drug dealer with a similar name there). It's not exactly hard to do.

Additionally, considering how much work Google is doing with JavaScript optimization, I highly doubt that they're unaware of methods of redirecting links using jscript instead of html. Whether they care enough to add it to their crawlers' code is another thing entirely.