Kyle
12-02-2007, 02:16 PM
The site wisegeek.com is such a piece of crap in my opinion.
Most of their quick, to the point articles are fine... but the manner in which this site was created, their goals, layout, and excessive advertising really piss me off. I feel it is content sites like these that hurt the higher quality sites who focus on a niche, or truly care about the content outside of the profits they could generate.
Here is one of their category pages...
http://www.wisegeek.com/health.htm
2800 links on one page to their articles.
Here is one of their articles...
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-pku.htm
Look at all the adsense units...
They designed their navigation at the bottom to match the google ad units, in which they are using TWO ad units.
Plus the horribly annoying Vibrant Ads...
The number of ad units. There is a difference between smartly blending in adsense units and doing what wisegeek is doing.
The purpose of the content. It is disgusting how obvious the reason this site was created, purely for adsense. It isn't even a borderline judgment against them.. Think to yourselves how many people would give wisegeek a return visit to look for information on a given subject.... At least with a site like HowStuffWorks (whose article quality is FAR better than wisegeek) visitors instantly realize this is a good site to learn 'how stuff works!' Plus howstuffworks has many other quality features (like pictures! wisegeek doesn't even have images!)
Sure, it is cool how many people the creator Denis can employ, and that they all have fields of expertise. It is the dream success referenced in the 'get rich from adsense guides' that tout how you can make money by writing about topics you love...
Felt like ranting, obviously wisegeek can begin to reform over time and be a quality site... but to have 2800 articles in the health category with no real pictures or anything interesting... blah, what do you think?
Most of their quick, to the point articles are fine... but the manner in which this site was created, their goals, layout, and excessive advertising really piss me off. I feel it is content sites like these that hurt the higher quality sites who focus on a niche, or truly care about the content outside of the profits they could generate.
Here is one of their category pages...
http://www.wisegeek.com/health.htm
2800 links on one page to their articles.
Here is one of their articles...
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-pku.htm
Look at all the adsense units...
They designed their navigation at the bottom to match the google ad units, in which they are using TWO ad units.
Plus the horribly annoying Vibrant Ads...
The number of ad units. There is a difference between smartly blending in adsense units and doing what wisegeek is doing.
The purpose of the content. It is disgusting how obvious the reason this site was created, purely for adsense. It isn't even a borderline judgment against them.. Think to yourselves how many people would give wisegeek a return visit to look for information on a given subject.... At least with a site like HowStuffWorks (whose article quality is FAR better than wisegeek) visitors instantly realize this is a good site to learn 'how stuff works!' Plus howstuffworks has many other quality features (like pictures! wisegeek doesn't even have images!)
Sure, it is cool how many people the creator Denis can employ, and that they all have fields of expertise. It is the dream success referenced in the 'get rich from adsense guides' that tout how you can make money by writing about topics you love...
Felt like ranting, obviously wisegeek can begin to reform over time and be a quality site... but to have 2800 articles in the health category with no real pictures or anything interesting... blah, what do you think?