I Could'nt agree more.

Google is not as concerned about the spam and competitors that will be trashing everyone's sites as they are about the ad revenue that they will be stealing from you as soon as they add their own ads to Sidewicki. Don't think for a moment that they won't. Not only does Sidewicki hijack your comments, traffic, have to potential for competitors to trash your reputation and spammers to spam the hell out of your site without any control by you to stop it, but eventually, even your ad revenue will suffer due to the competition from Sidewicki ads that Google will not have to compensate you for.

I can't wait for the lawsuits to roll in. Till then, I've bought SSL Certs to protect my most valuable sites from this Google theft.

Tell Google what you think
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-now-time.html

Or they can just use the API to search for relevant pages, then automatically spam their comments to the relevant SideWiki pages.

I agree and don't know why people are making such a fuss over this. I think this whole SideWiki thing will be all but forgotten by this time next year.

My take is that it either...

(a) it won't catch on with most users because it will be an obvious spam haven and malware distribution venue.

(b) if it does and if Google doesn't monitor it tightly or if they place their own ads on it they will have to pull it due to lawsuits, perhaps a large class action lawsuit.

So, no worries, it's such a terrible idea that it won't be around very long one way or another.

Just do what your Google Masters tell you to do and shut up. You people are just making it harder for the rest of us with your constant belly aching. If Google tells you to lick their boots clean, do it. Do you really want them to "lose" your site in the SERPs?

Now stop whining and get back to dancing for the puppetmasters.

Hi GuerrillaIM,

I like a lot of what you have to say on different topics. IMHO you are wrong on this one.

Let's just hope that Google comes to it's senses and drops this sidewiki app.

Until now, the joke has been Google is going to take over the world. sidewiki makes the joke not funny.

In addition to all the terrible things that have already been mentioned about it in this thread and others, just wait until the virus creators figure out how to introduce viruses directly through sidewiki. Now, no matter how careful Google Tool Bar users are about the sites they visit, EVERY site including Yours and Mine will be a potential place to pick up a virus.

Even the most careful surfer can be fooled by a sidewiki note saying "read more articles/posts/whatever by (Your Name Here) and then be taken to a malware site.

Even I with my non techie self can think of that. Heck, I don't even have to know how to set up a MalWare site I just have to know where they are and then put a link to them on YOUR site.

Now even the dumbest malcontent who likes to cause havoc and has no ability to do so can get in on the fun if he takes the time to figure out how to use sidewiki.

Don't think the virus hackers are not working on this as we speak.

I didn't mean to make this so long, however, let me relate one true story with a point.

I was riding the train last month. Four thugs got on the train and you could just tell that they were going to "mess" with someone.

Guess who they decided to mess with. They started harassing an elderly blind man. I won't go into detail but you can imagine what pranks they started playing on this poor old sole who was standing (by his choice) at the front of the car.

After about a minute it was clear that they were only going to escalate their cruel harassment so some of us on the train decided this was not going to go on. As we stood up, prepared for anything. The train came to a halt at a stop and the punks, seeing that they had some trouble coming, got off the train.

So what does this have to do with SideWiki?

Under the cloak of anonymity Thugs and Punks operate even more boldly on the Internet. Even the wimpy scaredy cats among them get emboldened to cause harm.

They already leave unwanted nasty and cruel comments on our Blogs, on their own sites and on RipOffReport and other havens where they gather.

Now imagine a well meaning person, and this happens thousands of times a day, putting up a blog or a website to talk about their wedding among their friends. Or think of the grieving children who put up a memorial site for their recently deceased Dad or Mom.

Now think of the cruel games the thugs and punks of the Internet will play on those people. The hurt they can cause is immeasurable.

Harming our Internet Marketing Sites is just one thing to be up in arms about. There is so much more harm they WILL cause.

It's been reported recently that a young girl was driven to suicide by cruel remarks on her myspace site. Now with sidewiki anyone and everyone can be a target/victim not on some remote site where we can choose not to visit but on OUR OWN SITES.

I have had a "who cares" attitude on just about every other issue that has come up. Warriors, "The government wants to take over the Internet." Me, "Relax don't worry, everything will be OK."

Warriors, "They want to charge postage on eMails." Me, "Relax, don't worry, It will never happen, everything will be OK."

Warriors, "STOP SPAM!" Me, "Relax don't worry. It will work itself out and be ok."

For many reasons, only a few of them stated in this post and the many others by other Warriors, this sidewiki thing has me a bit worried.

George Wright

Honestly, I think this is a truly boneheaded move by Google, but I also think they have smart folks working for them. I suspect they'll work to put safeguards in place when the proverbial sh*t hits the all-too-real fan. Surely they see the total cluster f**k they're about to start, right? They can't possibly be this far removed from reality... or maybe I'm way too naive.

John

Thanks James,

A picture really is worth a thousand words.

George Wright

Sometimes visualization is best ... This is why some of us will not sit down and take this with a grain of salt. Gossip can ruin the most respected person or business and all it takes is ONE person and then others will spread the lie on down the road.

I have been here way too many years and seen far too many honest people destroyed by gossip and now google just gave them the silver platter to do it right in your own backyard.

We all know what gossip is and how the lie spreads to be more and more each time it is told...

James

Man, a picture is worth a thousand words. Time to invest in SSL's.

All I am saying is don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

The main problem people here have is that competitors can leave negative comments on their sites. Then maybe 1% or less of the people who visit your website will see these comments, so they could *possibly* lose a sale.

To suggest that you should combat this by blocking ALL users of the google toolbar is detrimental in my opinion and sends the message that you have something to hide.

Google must have anticipated this, I am interested to see how this will play out.

Hi again,

It's draining just coming up with possible misuses for this but what if sidewiki has a rss feed and auto bloggers pick it up and ripoffreport picks it up. I know I'm going the "what if" rout a lot here but it could happen and the realities without the what ifs are bad enough.

The reason I'm going to block it is because I don't care what all the sidewiki posters have to say about anyone so I don't need to see the posts. And if you don't block it from your site, to use an already overused cliche, "You are not my target market."

George Wright P.S. I already know how to get my message out to those who might be my target market if they have sidewiki. It has to do with the message they will see in my blocking script. "Turn off your side wiki to get ...... ) This will work with my target market and that's all that counts.

That is the blocking script until James comes up with his solution, then I'll use that.

However, hopefully this thing will just fade away. Hopefully.

I'm done

George Wright P.S. If you want to read this thread later, better download it to your harddrive. Kudo's to the mods for letting us discuss this even though it borders or maybe even crosses over rule #1. It really is important. Thanks

Dude, easy with the "?", you might break the button.

Take a chill pill. What percentage of your visitors have google toolbar installed? What percentage of them know about side wiki? What percentage of them will actually read it for your site? What percentage of them will see a negative comment and be swayed to not buy the product as opposed to seeing a good comment and being convinced to buy?

My take is that it will lose you more sales to ban all toolbar users than if you go with the flow and look for other ways to protect your site.

My point is --> Banning all toolbar users from visiting your site isn't the right reaction <--

People seem to be reading more into my words. If you disagree then its fine, but this is my opinion on the situation.

If you block sidewiki users, you block everyone with the toolbar, whether they are using it or not (unless some new code has come out I am not aware of). The collateral damage IMO isn't worth it.

I plan on charging 200% the regular price to anyone using the google toolbar. If they want the regular price, or the current promotional price, they will have to get rid of the google toolbar. Of course I will provide a complete explanation of the evils of GT and sidewiki to those users.

James

As others have probably already said, I can see a script on the horizon that simply does not allow the wiki to either cache the data on your site, or load, or both.

Something like "SideWiki could not load as this time".

From there, we wouldn't have to ban anyone using the Google Toolbar, unless it be for matters of principle.

Not all customers, just have to take a stand on certain things. For any customers that do not respect my right to make a living and right to defend myself against spam, false accusations, etc.... then I probably do not want them as a customer.

Of course positive comments are great, but I am sure that positive comments won't be what people leave much of the time.

Also, if you have a blog that has 1000's of posts, from years and years of posting, guess what? You have to try to monitor all of that. When an old post is doing well in the SERPs then what are you supposed to do? Keep monitoring everything? I don't think so.

Good products give you a good reputation. Protecting yourself from the crap storm of lies and spam does not.

James

It has already started.

Google Sidewiki: Brands under attack | Blog | Econsultancy

Got the link from another thread here at the wf.

James

Hi Paul,

Blocking all toolbar users is only good for making a point. Personally I am more interested in profit. I design my website to accessibility standards so that dissabled people can still read them. I pick colours that contrast well even for people who are colour blind. I test my sites in multiple browsers and operating systems to make sure it can be viewed easily by all. I have researched the easiest font types and sizes to read and use them. Why would I then block a large portion of my viewers just because they choose to use the google toolbar?

Doesn't make sense to me. If people want to make a stand and think google will give a damn then go for it, personally I want as many people as possible to see my offers. I will look to other methods to prevent my sites being spammed with negative comments.

For those that are wanting to block the toolbar, let me say this so you have a full understanding before you may hurt your business even more.

Just because you have google toolbar blocked does not mean comments can not be posted on your site. Yep, that's right.. As explained above it would only take 1 hour to create a SpamWiki app, then the user never even needs to visit your site and can spam it... Now you may think ok then people can not see the comments..

Well, sorry but that is wrong... I hate to say it but all the SpamWiki app needs to do is auto post to twitter and facebook (which it could do with another hour or so of coding). These links that will show on twitter and facebook will actually link to "google" with a cached page of your site and the comments showing on the side.

As I said google planned this very well, there is no doubt about that at all..

James

Google is gonna have their ass handed to them... for creating such a stupid tool. This is a haven for spammers and idiots to rip apart sites and drive down their traffic and literally destroy many businesses.

Is this tool most popular among IMers and search engine optimization pros? If so, then it can hurt many of our businesses.

How does one go on about and block people that use this tool?

Also, just imagine how this tool can rip a big one in clickbank's profits = Imers profits. Google needs to re-think this one and do away with such a stupid tool.

James or Anyone,

I went to the google comments page to find out about SSL and found this.

"Sidewiki currently does not support comments over SSL (https) encrypted pages.
The button may also appear gray if other Sidewiki users can not access the target page."

What is an Internal page?

George Wright

Rhett,
I sent you a PM to explain because as I said I do not want to post and give ideas to "evil" people ...

James

Goerge,
It can post to an internal page and that even includes a "members area" page, now a non-member would only see the login screen (but still see comments) but members can see all comments ...

By the way: I have uninstalled this evil tool and sent my feedback to google and threatened them pretty much with laywers....

James

When things of this magnitude get the community buzzing I always think the thing that gets everyone all wild is a diversion to keep us from noticing something else going into effect as well.

This is a wild roundhouse right. Watch for the quick jab out of nowhere.

As if we don't all have enough to worry about. This just keeps getting better and better, as in more horrific. Apparently, we're all Pinky and Google is the Brain. They're gonna drag us along in their plans to take over the world - with our permission or without it.

A semi serious suggestion:

Option A:
Warriors conglomerate, form an organization, and slowly, over the course of a year, buy a majority of the shares of Google, thus ensuring we have control over Google's Board of Trustees/Directors.

Option B:
Warriors join and form a new search engine, but use their fantastic marketing skills both online and off to "sell" the new SE to the public masses.

Yeah, it's a bit early to get excited about this for whatever reason.

[DELETED]

Where's the OWNER'S note on the Sidewiki?

Allen?

Until something's done about it, why not deflect some of the impact by
posting an OWNER'S note? It's featured, stays 'sticky' on the top, and
can easily deflect other opinions that show up below it.

That's what I've done with my sites/blogs.

Ref: Danny Sullivan's review at
Google Sidewiki Allows Anyone To Comment About Any Site

All success
Dr.Mani

I can see absolutely nothing wrong with people speaking their minds about any business, online or offline alike. As a community effort, sidewiki could be a great idea. If it hadn't been for spam, which is a big fat if.

On the plus side, the average Joe, wouldn't have a clue what a Google Toolbar was if it smacked them in the face with a Page Rank rating..

I suspect the vast majority of the damage is going to be done in our area where folks are more savvy and have toolbars galore.

Really does seem like a daft addition from Google, the potential for abuse is endless, wait until some of the big boys, Amazon etc start moaning to Google that their site is getting deluged with people constantly trying to redirect their traffic .

Really doesn't seem very well thought out, I'm not sure what the benefit is to the end user, it's clearly going to be full of any crap anybody fancies saying that day.

I would like to know if there is a redirect that would allow me to not only block SideWiki but be able to show a message to the person that was attempting to see my page.

Think I will start a page that states

"Sorry you were unable to visit my site and receive a valuable free gift but due to unethical behavior by some toolbar creators your browser has been banned from my site until you remove the Google toolbar".

Matt

What a great point... Need to be carefull in drawing people away with advices of things that need a littl ebit of consideartion... it can cost a lot!

Kevin

GuerrillaIM,I certainly don't. You'll notice I said that the argument was flawed.

I've found that most disagreements like this boil down to differences in assumptions. If you can get the assumptions stated clearly, the disagreements often either go away easily, or they're seen to be irreconcilable. Neither case requires there to be a bad guy in the mix.


Paul

Good or bad. Right or wrong. Sidewiki is here and it's here for good unless Google has a change of heart which is either very unlikely or *may* happen some time in the "future."

The "future" could be light years away (to us) in this dynamic, ever evolving business that we're in.

We could choose to bitch and moan, have a meeting (or a heart attack, Steven), form a committee, write some stern letters and blog posts, take a vote on whether or not to approve the direct action of forming a larger more effective committee with the wide-ranging mandate to write some sterner letters and blog posts...ad infinitum.

Or we could simply employ two of my favourite words;

adapt and overcome

I know which option I'd take.

Every month it seems the sky is falling for one reason or another, especially in this business, which strikes me as strange because we and countless others are raking it in. Sidewiki isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to that.

We learnt about Sidewiki last year during a visit to Google's Mayakovskogo engineering facility in St Petersburg. It struck me that they were planning to use some browser real estate for social media purposes. Ok, they are taking a lot of it, but this is all they are really doing. You have to admit it is a stroke of genius - for them.

How the Sidewiki and it's deeper algorithms (plus other developments!) will be used in future for the SERPS is of far more interest...



Tom

Nice piece of selective editing, Mike. However, you missed the rest of the sentence,

"...unless Google has a change of heart which is either very unlikely or *may* happen some time in the "future."

Maybe your yawning clouded your ability to comprehend my sentence(s).

Like I said: "adapt and overcome" and you're right it's great to see so many Warriors taking up the mantle and actually *DOING SOMETHING* rather than whining. I'd expect nothing less

Like I said: the Sidewiki won't effect our businesses because we (and those you laud) are actually *DOING SOMETHING* about it.

Welcome to the forum. Stick around you might learn something...other than not to read and subsequently overreact whilst yawning.



Tom

well, I have been too busy to get involved in the sidewiki debacle.
Sorry to hear about those suffering.

And, on a complete non-sequitor, I'm writing to say that I'm glad the thread is no longer encouraging me to "clam down". Dang. LOL.

Just got an email from Catalin for an update on his script. He has developed it into a Wordpress plugin also with a lot of new features added to it.

No matter what Google does or does not do about providing an opt-out, it's pretty clear to me that developers will be countering it which will provide us an opt out whether Google likes it or not.

designfuschion On your site with sidewiki it uses the browser add-on on google's url it puts your ite in a iframe and changes your html ...

As for restricted zones that does not turn off sidewiki for your visitors... Restricted zones is in your config for the browser, it is used security.

James

Almost identical tool, almost identical implementation...

Ended up in court, Gator lost and was forced to stop using it. I'm more and more surprised Google had the balls to do something THAT similar and hope they'd get away with it. I wonder if their lawyers were on crack when they gave the go ahead...

Judge: See ya later, Gator - CNET News

Could someone explain exactly what the issue is with GT anyways , thiis isuue is new to me

It would be sad(on society as a whole) if google got busted for 'circumventing',on a by product all becuase of how they went about the initial product.

Which then brings up another question..are the creators of wikiblockers 'circumventing'(even though us webmasters.IM'ers are trying to defend our rights in first place?

Google has paved the way to a regulated net.
I'd hazard a guess-money.

Hopefully these points will warrant your careful consideration on the Sidewiki issue...

1. Sidewiki on your own site is only the beginning of the issue. Sidewiki entries are now showing up in regular organic search results on Google, which means that Sidewiki entries will be potentially competing with your own site in Google results. For an example, try this search on Google:

sidewiki buzzmachine danger

and check the results. If they look like mine, you'll see this:



2. More importantly, if you could click that link from Google in the image above, you'd go to this page:

Google Sidewiki entry about Google Sidewiki: Danger BuzzMachine

As you can see, Buzzmachine's content is being presented under a Google URL. If you are publishing content, would you be happy with this arrangement?

3. Sidewiki applies to individual pages, not only sites. That means if you have thousands of pages you could potentially have thousands of individual Sidewikis on your pages. Multiply that by dozens of sites, and you can imagine the difficulty you would have in keeping up with what people are saying about your sites.

4. Making Sidewiki difficult to use is currently relatively simple. Since it uses the page's URL for reference in the Sidewiki database, you don't need any fancy blockers and you don't need to deny access to toolbar users, you simply have to make every single URL on your site completely unique. That's not difficult at all to do, and a simple search will show you how it is done. For example, if you have a site with a page called index.html there would be a Sidewiki for it. But if you append other text to the end of the URL, such as

index.html?refid=qw425mgi1n

then there would be a completely DIFFERENT Sidewiki for it. Therefore, if EVERY page is completely unique, comments posted to:

index.html?refid=qw425mgi1n

would never show up on

index.html

nor would they show up on

index.html?refid=qbjhb01nmn34

as an example.

Anyhow, I hope this helps illustrate the larger nature of the issue and also provides a simple work-around that may work for some of you and doesn't include banning toolbar users.

I have already created a solution that blocks comments even using google's url but it only blocks google's url with comments for toolbar users. There is nothing you can do about a Non-Google browser because the fact is google is hosting the freaking thing.

I have also created a solution that stops those comments from being seen even when the bad poster shared the url. This is the only solution on the market that will fully block.

As far as making something simple to block sidewiki, I will disagree... It took me a week to create an advanced system to protect sites and no it is not some simple js with hash numbers.

James

I admit I'm a newbie but I don't understand but I don't understand how anyone can not see this as theft by google.
I understand VRE are sold and bought each day. That fact alone makes it property. The fact that it can be bought and sold makes it private. Seems to me all the rights of ownership are inherent in a website.
Also can someone explain to me how this sidewiki is any different than phising, you know fake emails that direct you to a different site. I mean most banking instutions and sites like Amazon take a dim view of scams, enough that they have a fraud division. It seems to me this does the same thing, sends you to a fake webpage of your site. Is this not the same?
Also I would think if you had either built your site or had it built with a design in mind, origional content and along with domain name then it seems to me that is a clear case of copywright infringment. The author does have the right to his own stuff.
It seems to me that google is in violation of law in at least three areas, plus potential libel suits. I mean they are hosting these fake sites...right? That besides what I see as copywright and private property rights violations to say nothing about phising and spam. I can think of several scenarios where you maynot want a site widely available.
But I may not be seeing this correctly. So if I'm wrong on any of these points will somebody please enlighten me.
Thank You
-Lyn

I also wonder if this is a benign app I assume google allows it on their sites. Correct? I was thinking if indeed google wants free exchange then they'd be part of the exchange by subjecting their site to the same potential abuse.
That is I could go to google.com and comment on this or anything in particular using sidwicki. If you can't do this, that would seem to be admission of guilt.
Or am I reading more into it.

For those that will embrace sidewiki and move on...

WordPress › WP oySidewiki WordPress Plugins

For those that will not embrace it...

Sidewiki Blocker Wordpress Plugin

This is my contribution to both sides since I read the entire thread and didnt see one person provide a actual downloadable working solution.

You will notice The Blocker in the second link was posted 20 days ago.

I found out about this sidebar wiki thing an hour ago when enabling and upgrading my toolbar.

I should have just did my google seach first rather than search the forum for talk about this or a solution to block sidewiki. It would have taken me less than 5 min to get what I was looking for.

Richard Wing

I have already seen two forums, one for cancer support and one for chronic pain support with derogatory spam comments in the sidewiki.

These sites are not even business sites. The only ads they have on them is a few Adsense ads that do not probably even pay the hosting and thugs and spammers have already targeted them with comments that make the fake ones RJ put in his fake picture pale in comparison.

Who uses these forums? People with cancer and people in pain. Once again the rats pick on the weak. Chances are the people running those forums don't even know they have been targeted. & it makes me wonder how many people with cancer or in pain that have the sidewiki decide not to go to those places that as far as I could tell are only attempting to help others.

If you think this thing isn't a danger, to you as a savvy internet person, the punks may avoid you and you may be OK, however, many innocent & naive will suffer.

How many normal surfers use google toolbar anyway? I'd be far more worried about Elvis coming back and haunting our sites with FTC jailhouse rock mp3's

2 Months since Sidewiki launch and they have compiled a list of great uses of sidewiki from users. Also a new API has been released...

Official Google Blog

Enjoy.

Richard Wing