Sorry, missed that one. I can tell you that my clients who work for Google are some of the most wonderful people I have ever met. Is being a really good person a requirement to work for Google?

A larger percentage of my clients work for Microsoft than Google, but I think that’s because Microsoft has a few more employees here on the Eastside than Google

Although it is interesting that Google has such a disproportionate amount of your search traffic. On the Zearch side, Google only generates 62% of it’s search traffic (Yahoo is about 20%, and everybody fights for what’s left), which is closer to internet averages.

Better hope that Google never changes PageRank to your detriment.

• Google (196 – 95%)
• MSN (3 – 1%)
• Yahoo! (3 – 1%)
• Search.com (3 – 1%)
• Ask Jeeves (1 – 0%)

Google has sent us 95% of our search-related traffic. MSN, Yahoo, Search.com and Ask add up to 10 hits, whereas google has sent us 196 hits!

Here is our initial exchange: We did not know each other at all at the time of these intitial emails.
_
Dustin asks: Ardell, I just checked out your blog and it looks like you’ve got a good thing going… I’ve been thinking of branching Rain City Guide to cover more Eastside real estate issues… If you’re interested in becoming Rain City Guide’s Kirkland expert, we should talk about what options might be available… The only real benefit to blogging on Rain City Guide as oppose to your own site is that I get quite a bit of traffic, so you’d get a lot of exposure quickly. (Plus, I’ve got a pretty advance back-end that makes blogging quite easy…). Best,Dustin

Ardell replies: I would certainly like to discuss it. But my entries can be somewhat controversial. See my latest beginning a series on the DOJ suing NAR. Would you control my content in any way?

_
I do recall my wanting to meet Dustin in person before agreeing to be a contributor, but it just didn’t work out that way. I did invite several to my home for dinner after I started posting, and that helped me view everyone as a team, and those I did meet moreso than those I did not.

As you can see, from my very first response to Dustin’s inquiry, I warned him regarding my controversial style. I likely would not have agreed to be a contributor if his response to whether or not he would control my content was yes. His original idea that I would be posting about “the Eastside”, and what I actually ended up posting about, didn’t quite match up

Dustin’s focus and mine are fairly far apart, as I am most interested in “speaking to” local people as my audience and Dustin has a much broader audience to address. We have discussed this from time to time and so are aware of the difference as in “he prefers high Google ranking” while I prefer “high MSN ranking”. I guess that’s why his site is more highly ranked at Google and my blogs are more highly ranked at MSN, at least the way I check ranking, which is quite different from the way a techie checks ranking.

Dustin does not moderate my posts and they hit “real time” as soon as I “hit the button”. I expect we all “self moderate” to some extent, I know I do.

Once in a while I do a “Trifecta” of posts, but generally I try to monitor myself with regard to “space” between my posts. Space not being “time” but other contributors’ articles in between mine. I look at the cumulative product, in deciding when to post and when not to post, like a big “Dagwood Sandwich”.

Sometimes two of us “hit the button” at the same time. But generally we can see the “layers” of the sandwich” we are building. When choosing a topic, I try to mix up “industry talk” with “consumer issues” with “technology” posts. And, of course, a little comic relief or “fluff” piece, when the tension gets thick over a controversial subject.

I don’t think Dustin even knows that I’m doing that, and I doubt he’s envisioning RCG as a “big Dagwood Sandwich”, the concept probably being “before his time”

My dilemma surfaces when I butt heads with the attorneys. Butting heads with Robbie on mls viewed as “data” vs “the mls as a cooperative body of people”, offers some good techie viewpoint/consumer viewpoint/agent viewpoint scenarios. Seeing the mls through different colored glasses can be quite interesting. But some of the exchanges between Craig and Russ have been difficult for me, Craig moreso than Russ, but both of them more than me and other contributors. You’d think it might be two agents butting heads…but didn’t turn out that way…so far.

I actually try to leave myself out of moderating articles as much as possible.

The exception is for new contributors. I give them rights to “save” but not “publish” articles. But rather than moderating what the new contributors say, I mostly use this buffer to give them ideas on how to improve their articles. Typically, I might suggest additional links, remind them to use the spell check, and/or let them know how to add photos.

However, once a contributor has successfully posted a few articles, I then give them authority to post at will. There are tons of articles I’ve cringed at when I first see them published, but that is par for the course and part of what I think makes RCG interesting.

For two of the contributors, I’ve even bumped them up to “editor” status so that they can edit articles and comments. This is great for me because I go through phases when I’m simply too busy to play the editor role, so there are others available to keep up the site. Obviously, I reserve the right to modify any contributor’s status, but I’ve never had any of them even come close to abusing the system, and I definitely don’t anticipate any problems into the future. I wouldn’t bring them on unless I thought they were good people!

That’s a great question, and while I don’t pretend to know Google’s algorithms, I may be able to provide some insight.

From Google’s perspective, their search engine is optimized to send traffic to the places where their searchers will be happy. Their first incarnation of this was called PageRank and it based the value of any website based on the number of incoming links. This was a massive improvement, but it turns out it is pretty easy to game (hence, the millions of link directories that real estate agents can pay to be part of)… so Google has gotten much more sophisticated and now pays a lot more attention to the quality of the content (I don’t know how they do this, but for the sake of my argument, let’s assume that they have found ways to quantify this information).

All of this leads to the main point which is that Blogs do a much better job adding useful content on “off topics” (check out my post on The Long Tail for more background)

To give an example of this in practice, I went to the “bottom” of my search stats). Below is a partial list of the 85 or so search terms that people have used today to get to RCG. What I find interesting about this list is that there is really on a few other people on the web who are providing interesting information on these topics:

• open houses do not sell
• buy commercial space in georgetown seattle
• new condos seattle
• boileau and “mercer island”
• seattle housing real estate market forecast
• seattle real estate blog
• openxml image
• flip this house
• buyer contingency financing
• redfin
• about NWMLS
• seattle real estate
• lowest price places to live
• real estate blog
• rain city real estate
• living on barge
• housing market in seattle
• condo conversion specialists

Do you pretty much let everything in? Have you ever rejected some really dumb article? Did the author of the rejected article have a fit?

Do your contributors email you first to discuss an article they want to write? Or do you just give contributors the password to post articles?