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Post by timoneill on Aug 21, 2011 13:20:22 GMT
This post at B&W has to be read to be believed. Someone should buy the retired high school teacher a tin foil hat.
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Post by merkavah12 on Aug 21, 2011 17:14:07 GMT
Wow. This guy is wacky. I haven't seen this kind of deluded narcissism since John Loftus.
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Post by timoneill on Aug 22, 2011 0:08:16 GMT
Wow. This guy is wacky. I haven't seen this kind of deluded narcissism since John Loftus. The guy clearly doesn't have a clue how Google rankings work. I laughed out loud at this bit: Hannam is clearly an expert at these things and this explains the high rating of his review of Closing. Now he is at it again. If you Google my new book Holy Bones, Holy Dust, How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe, the second entry is from his blog Quodlibeta. If you open it you find that it is no more than a discussion about my book by Hannam and his supporters even though none of them have read it. This does not stop them, of course, being disparaging about it. I was hoping that the Quodlibeta discussion would make the top spot to make my case here even more compelling but, in this case, Google appear to have been more successful. Although I have done nothing to arrange this, my own article on my own book from the New Humanist takes the top spot. The Quodlibeta entry seems forever doomed to be at number two. Hannam is clearly losing his touch!So, if we can get this paranoid ranting straight, this idiot has convinced himself that the nefarious fiend James Hannam and his coterie of cackling minions can manipulate Google at will. Yet in this second case, for some reason, the fiend's mystical powers have failed him. Anyone who wasn't a self-obsessed loon might pause for a moment there and ponder that his theory about these rankings might be wrong and that, in fact, the rankings are driven by the number of clicks on a given link and nothing more. But no, Charlie Freeman doesn't hesitate for a second and concludes that this is somehow Google being "successful" (what?) against Hannam's foul "powers". You couldn't make comedy like this up. And not only does the improbably-named "Ophelia Benson" propogate this nonsense but she (of course) has censored my comments pointing out that Paranoid Charlie needs to get a grip and beg borrow or steal a clue about how search engines work. It is to laugh. |
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joel
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 70
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Post by joel on Aug 22, 2011 12:39:36 GMT
So is Freeman an official contributor to Butterflies and Wheels now?
It's not exactly true that the links to a page are the only factor with its Google ranking; Google does account for the arrangement of words and the like. You can hire people who will work with your page to drive up its Google ranking (sometimes at the cost of grammar and good prose!)
But of course the idea that James would nefariously edit the posts on Quodlibeta to drive up the Google ranking when people search for Freeman is ridiculous. And there's nothing sinister about James trying to increase his book website's Google ranking - that's just another form of advertising nowadays.
I have to say that I am kind of worried that topics like this will heighten Freeman's antagonism toward James even more.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Aug 22, 2011 13:53:26 GMT
Yes - quite remarkable. Not only have catholic apologists like James Hannam (and now Maria Dzielska apparently - see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Agora_(film) launched a sinister bid to rewrite history but they also manipulating the google rankings to promote their lies on the internet. Good thing the Butterflies are around to expose all this. |
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Post by eckadimmock on Aug 22, 2011 22:05:30 GMT
One of James' Google manipulators at work yesterday..  source |
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Post by timoneill on Aug 23, 2011 0:34:55 GMT
I have to say that I am kind of worried that topics like this will heighten Freeman's antagonism toward James even more. James has never been anything but polite and gentlemanly toward Freeman. I can't see it's done him any good - Freeman's ideologically-driven neo-Draper-Whitism has only intensified and his vendetta against James has only increased in weirdness (eg the blog post above). And when Freeman can seriously convince himself that James' reviews, my review and even a single thread on this forum are getting high rankings because of some kind of voodoo internet sorcery on James' part, then the guy is clearly too clueless to reason with. Note the comments on the B&W post above where Endre Fodstad tried patiently to explain reality to the retired schoolmaster. His sensible efforts bounced off Freeman's impenetrable ferrous cranus. The guy's a loon and it seems he's found birds of a feather to roost amongst. |
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