Hi Everyone.
I know this message is late in arrival, but I wanted to take a few moments to talk about the events of the past week, as well as the direction RantRave will be heading in the near future.
As many (or all) of you now know, RantRave has been kicked off of Google News. While we initially were upset by this, we see it as a blessing in disguise. First, a few facts. RantRave was intentionally and maliciously targeted by spammers, in an effort to get us removed from Google News (the who and why does not matter). They were successful and we have been banned for at least 30 days. After 30 days, we may re-apply to the site. We made some behind-the-scenes changes, which we hope will appease the powers that be. Our application for reinstatement may or may not be approved. So, for those of you wanting to post to Google News, hold tight. It will hopefully be back up soon, but there are no guarantees.
This setback has forced us to reassess the site and our mission for the site. RantRave was designed with two goals in mind. The first was community. We wanted to create a place where people could post their opinions and have meaningful and spirited debate. Our wish was that the debate not be mean-spirited, or nasty, but thoughtful and challenging (although, being the Internet, the mean and nasty is hard to avoid completely). That said, I would encourage all of you to review the
Community Guidelines. There is some good stuff in there.
Our second goal was to empower the common blogger. We wanted to use our knowledge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to give people a voice in organic Google results. We have succeeded in this. RantRave is extremely effective at getting your thoughts, opinions, and concerns into Google organic search results in near-real time and sometimes on Page 1. You no longer need a long-established website, or extensive SEO knowledge to be seen in organic search results. You have RantRave.
The results speak for themselves.
When we were originally accepted as a Google News provider, we immediately started writing content that would help us achieve high view counts, in an effort to boost exposure. This led to others writing exclusively about news and we drifted further and further from our origial goals. RantRave was never intended to be a news source. That was just a lucky fluke and we allowed it to get out of hand.
Additionally, we feel that our "Get Paid to Post" theme sent the wrong message and attracted the wrong type of author. As many of you have observed and pointed out, people are working the system and writing, essentially, spam posts, in an effort to make an extra buck.
Moving forward, RantRave is going to put less emphasis on Google News (if our application is approved) and Get Paid to Post and more focus the Community and ability to appear in organic search results. Site copy will reflect these changes in the coming weeks.
So, what are we going to do about it?
First, to foster community, we will assign more moderators. Our hope is that more moderators will encourage more discussion in the comments and more communication with the Administrators. We will also try to keep junk posts off of the site. Some examples of "junk" are recipes and AP-style news releases that are exclusively statements of fact and completely lack any opinion.
In the site documentation, we will be placing more emphasis on RantRave's ability to appear in organic search results and less emphasis on Google News. Among other things, we will replace the RSS feed on the homepage, which displays posts accepted by GN, with something highlighting organic results.
Lastly, to minimize the Get Paid to Post aspect of the site, we are removing graphics and links that discuss it. Additionally, we will return to a 50/50 revenue share. Our ads will alternate with yours.
We understand that some of these changes will cause some of you to post elsewhere and we are sorry to see you go. However, we believe the remaining members, as well as future members, will be a healthier, more tightly knit community of passionate people.
If you have any questions or concerns, you may voice them publicly in the comments section, or privately, by sending me a message via
my profile.
Alex Layton
Site Administrator