As web site owners we like to think that we are on top of our web presence. We know our own site inside out and feel we are familiar with the vast majority of places elsewhere on the net that we are listed. But occasionally we can be taken off-guard and stumble across a new in-bound link completely by chance…
So it was that I discovered AboutUs.org while researching online business tools for another part of this site. Visiting whoisdomaintools.com the natural instinct to try out the search was to enter one of my own domains. And interesting reading it made too.
For as well as such things as title and description relevancy (87 and 85 per cent respectively) and a search engine optimisation score (93 per cent), the whoisdomaintools results contained an intriguing link to a Wiki article on the domain. A mix of curiosity, vanity and business research compelled me to click through and land on a wikipedia-style page dedicated to my domain. (Check right now, your site is probably there too.)
The content of the page has been culled directly from the site and consists of details of the site title, description, languages, address, contact details, additional information, related domains, external links, and categories. Fairly standard stuff that can be harvested from any site, but there was a fax number I didn’t recognise at all. Goodness knows where that came from…I’m fairly certain it wasn’t from my site.
So what? A free advert. Well, not quite, for beside each of the page entries was an edit link that definitely required further investigation.
According to the, um, About Us of AboutUs.org, it is a “wiki whose goal is to create a free and valuable Internet resource containing information both about websites and other community created topics.”
The site was evidently pre-populated with information about many different web sites and thousands of updates are now being made by people each day. In other words, Aboutus is a wikipedia of commercial web sites. But, as AboutUs.org have it, their vision hinges “on the power of collaboration and the unique capacity of wiki technology to capture the coming together of communities.
“Because no single resource is as powerful as the one that can tap into the knowledge of every visitor, AboutUs stands front and center as one of the most valuable information resources on the web. By synthesizing informational and commercial sites, AboutUs creates a vibrant community asset.”
Admirable aims indeed. However, what about those edit links?
Worringly, anyone can edit any page simply by creating an account, so go to AboutUs.org and register. Remember to complete the email verification they send and login again to the site. To protect ‘your’ pages, enter your full domain name, in the search box. Once on the listing, click one of the edit links and check the Watch page box at the foot of the page, then click Save page.
Next, scroll to the top of the page and click My Preferences in the top right hand corner. The User Profile is the topmost tab, in here tick the first three boxes in order to be emailed whenever changes are made. (This will only work, however, if you have confirmed the email address entered when you registered. The email verification is sent within minutes of the registration being submitted. To confirm, open the email, entitled ‘AboutUs e-mail address confirmation’, click the link and login.) Further fine tuning of email notifications can be made by selecting the Watchlist tab.
In the Editing tab there is also the option to enable/disable section editing via [edit] links. However, this only applies to you as a user, not the rest of the world.
If you have more than one domain, you’ll need to search and go through the edit/Watch this page routine for them all. To check exactly which pages are being monitored, select the My Watchlist link from the top right hand corner. Click the Show and edit complete watchlist.
None of this is to suggest that wikis and AboutUs.org are inherently bad things. Indeed, they should be viewed as opportunities, not threats, so long as some commonsense is applied. A good place to investigate the possibilities of a wiki as an adjunct to our existing web presence is by taking the wiki tour
