Google’s Sidewiki

My thoughts on Google’s Sidewiki

No, it has nothing to do with credit cards or credit card fraud, but in case you haven’t noticed, Merchant911 has been about more than credit cards lately. I have been trying to make it merchant related, and Sidewiki certainly is.

About Sidewiki? One word. Hijack. That’s what Google is doing to your website. They’re taking your website, adding a sidebar, and letting anyone enter any sort of crap into that sidebar.

I’ve heard a few people opine that Sidewiki isn’t a bad thing. Well no, of course it’s not as long as you’re OK with Google defacing your website – you know, the website that you’ve worked so hard on (or spent a lot of money on, or both.) Yes, that includes this one. Google’s Sidewiki will allow anyone to post anything in that sidebar.

If you’re OK with Sidewiki, then you’re OK with spam on your site. If you’re OK with Sidewiki, then you’re OK with links to smut on your family safe site. If you’re in e-commerce and you’re OK with Sidewiki, then you’re OK with competitors putting links to their sites on your site; and perhaps even a bad comment or two about your product or maybe that you’re a thief. And, unless you install Google’s Toolbar and Google’s Sidewiki inside that toolbar, you won’t even know the stuff is there.

OK – so maybe you’re OK with Sidewiki. Sorry, but I’m not.

There are a couple of ways to get around the thing but all of them require some basic programming skills. There is another side to those methods. Either you steer visitors off your site completely or you steer them to another page. I’ve also seen a Javascript that claims to block the Sidewiki. The problem is that all of these methods can (and probably will) be detected by Google. I don’t know that it WILL effect your standing with Google but you can bet your Page Rank that it COULD. And the links on Sidewike won’t have the target=”_blank” tag so kiss your visitors goodbye if they click one.

And just to add insult to injury, if you’ve designed your site for resolutions of 1024 or higher, the Sidewiki will take up a good chunk of screen real estate that will require horizontal scrolling; something most web designers avoid at all costs.

And just in case you think you’re reading the rantings of a madman, here’s a couple of links to look at:

Talkbiz

Vizion Interactive

Advertising Age

If those links don’t convince you, try a Google search for something like Sidewiki is good.

In case you’d like to register your displeasure with the Big G, and I think you should, you can do it here.