Top 5 Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World! (SFWeekly story)

Definitely an amazing ending. And I agree. The tone of the article itself and the way the reporting is presented doesn't seem at all critical. He just presents the facts, along with the fact that Bleacher Report, no matter what anyone else thinks, is doing exactly what it wants to do exactly how it wants to do it.

Part of me thinks there has to be a best of both worlds scenario: One where true journalism shines through on a search engine optimization format. It isn't that difficult to imagine Web staffs incorporating headlines with full keywords and things of that nature into their duties.

 

Yup.

I don't think there's a person in the world who looks at Bleacher Report. In fact there are a lot of people (myself being one) who actively try to avoid it. Yet there are still 10-20 times a month I click on one of their fucking links.

"Google-raping SEO" is what Deadspin called it long ago. Still the best description of their business plan.

 

It is sort of remarkable to think about how much power Google has and how fortunate a place like BR is that Google mostly lets them manipulate their algorithm. Would BR have any recourse if Google said "You know what? We don't like your shit. You're excluded from our results. If people want to see 'Top 5 Resons Tony Rono could save the Cowboys by getting back with Jessica Simpson' they can get there through Bing or Yahoo or fucking Netscape."

I suppose that goes against the whole Google philosophy, but I feel like its going to get harder and harder in the coming years to sort through all the BR and Huffington Post crap out there.

A lot of people have certainly taken advantage of the fact that Google (mostly) lives by their "Don't Be Evil" philosophy.

 

Google dropped the "Don't" off that a long time ago.

 

If you use Firefox this plugin can be set to block sites you're sick of accidentally clicking on because they keep popping up in searches. Bleacher's the only site on my current block list.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blocksite/

 

Every major media company does this. There are a few problems, mostly in that if your site autoposts AP copy, you're really hurting your SEO opportunities with those stories. But the general idea is the same, and Google News is smart enough to mostly prefer legitimate organizations rather than content mills.

The problem is that Google's Web search, the normal one, wastes no time differentiating. And it shouldn't. That's not how it's supposed to work. But on top of that, Bleacher Report writes stories with the specific intent of ranking high on Google searches and drawing clicks. It's not just a battle of ranking high. You need to give a reader pause with a headline such as "Tom Brady is overrated: 25 reasons why." Obviously, that's trolling. But trolling works.

The more clicks you get, particularly the more clicks you get directly through Google, the higher your story will rank on related searches. It's all a big threshing machine and the field never ends.

 

http://www.theonion.com/articles/furious-bleacher-report-editor-will-make-staff-ran,30662/

SAN FRANCISCO—Frustrated with the poor quality of lists the website’s writers have produced as of late, BleacherReport.com editor Eric Briggs threatened Monday to force the staff to rank things “all fucking night” if he had to. “What do you fucking think this is? It’s Bleacher Report. Pick any fucking sports shit and rank it,” said Briggs, before angrily slamming shut the laptop of a young writer he found working on a 4,000-word feature on the legacy of racial prejudice in tennis. “I don’t give a shit if you’re tired. Rank the goddamn top 10 fingers on Tom Brady’s hands if you have to. Just shit something out, and people will click through it.” Briggs added that if he did not have 400 new lists ready to put up on the website the next morning, the staff could “say goodbye” to their “cushy-ass $5-a-post jobs.”

 

The next time a Bleacher Report writer types a complete sentence will be the first. Carry on, everyone.

 

A somewhat comical response: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1440117-ranking-the-top-10-fingers-on-tom-bradys-hands

 

I can admit that I enjoyed that.

 

Thank you for posting this. Enjoyed it very much.

 

Agreed. That might be the best and most creative thing BR has ever done.