Sidewiki, Get Off My Lawn!
While the term is very new and not everyone has installed the latest Google toolbar, Sidewiki is here and has taken root on every site. Like a sprout of crabgrass on your yard, it is there on the front of your website – whether you realize it or not. If you are thinking just because you can’t see it that it is of no importance or danger to you, think again.
This new application created to launch from a Google toolbar is not to be confused with a social bookmark. No, this beast actually reveals it’s head directly on your site creating a large comments column down the left side of your browser and taking up nearly a third of your virtual real estate and stealing your web. Anyone and his brother with a Gmail account can post comments using the sidewiki, which will stay on your site unless Google or the original poster decides to edit them out. Google has been gracious enough to allow web masters to post the top comment to appear in the sidewiki, but other than that it’s a wild west land grab for anyone to make their mark.
While this sounds all fun and innocent, there are nefarious characters about the web (this former scam victim is well aware of this) who will no doubt find ways to abuse this new technology to no end. As a website owner, you have no control over which comments are left and who leaves them. In addition, other media can be left behind such as web video. Links directing YOUR VISITORS can whisk them away to another domain whose intentions for the end user may not be so kind. If you have a dispute with a neighbor let’s say, there is no stopping them from airing out the laundry on your business for the world to see. While you could just post a whole lot of text on your own sidewiki in an effort to bury the bad stuff under the rug, this will not prevent comments from happening to show in the search engine results.
On Your Site
Sidewiki uses something resembling an iframe where the window is available on your site and on every page. Webmasters with hundreds or even thousands of pages will find it near impossible to check what is being said on and about their sites as they would need to explore every page of the site.
A newly discovered loophole could provide some relief, but if you are managing tens of sites this could become a burden of additional maintenance to put out the fires.
You may be thinking, “So what, people can leave lousy comments about you on facebook or other forums already so what is the big deal?” The big deal is that instead of these things appearing on an external site which you don’t control, these kinds of happenings will display directly on your web pages associating them more firmly with you and your business. One of the primary reasons for purchase of your own hosting and domain is so you control exactly what is seen on the page.
Let’s talk about advertising. There is speculation that the direction of the sidewiki will lead to Google adding their ads into the Pandoras box sitting on your site. If you are someone who relies on making money by running adsense on your site and G has ads appearing in the side, you could be at great risk of seeing your ad revenue drop. Already spotted are suggestions on the sidewiki for others to get the toolbar. While the toolbar is free, this is already advertising by Google that can draw your readers away from your site.
Current Bandaids
Some Grassroots efforts are currently in discussion, but the best solution to date is the addition of a sidewiki blocker to your sites. It is a bit of code that will dump comments left into a sandbox where they will not appear to other visitors coming to your site. It can not avoid comments from indexing in the SERPS or actually delete the comments, but it can keep visitors on your site more focused on what you are offering as opposed to what others may be spamming on the side.
Petition
If you would like to voice your opinions on the matter, a petition has been started at Kill Sidewiki Before it Kills You .
Yes, sounds dramatic but honestly none of us know just how far this thing can go. If there were perhaps a way for webmasters to bow out of the sidewiki participation it could be enough to rest our already weary heads.
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